Chapter 135 The Earth’s Wasteland 8

Chapter 135 The Earth’s Wasteland 8

One hour earlier...

Flashes of Sword was standing around five meters away from the headless body, standing guard for Feng Bujue.

"Are you sure you want to do something like that?" Flashes of Sword glanced at Feng Bujue, who was working on the dead body, and his eyes seemed to be saying, You are one hell of a madman.

"Isn’t that question a bit too late since I am already working on it? Also, is this because you don’t want to lose another grenade?" Feng Bujue asked.

"Ah... To be honest, compared to the waste of the grenade, I am more worried about your mental state..." Flashes of Sword frowned at him.

"What has this got to do with my mental state?" Feng Bujue replied. "I am merely using a man’s carcass to step up a trap inside a virtual game. Any mentally stable person, as long as they can come up with this strategy, would not hesitate to put it into action."

"Haha... Whatever you say..." Flashes of Sword did not want to argue with the man, and at that moment, he had an inkling as to why this man’s IGN was Feng Bujue, the ’Feng’ here synonymous with crazy.

Feng Bujue curled one end of the metallic wire around the grenade’s safety pin. He held the grenade in his hand, rolled up his sleeves, and roughly and directly reached his hand into the dead man’s intestines. He shoved the grenade into the body and placed it snugly inside the stomach. On the front of the carcass, he incised a very small wound so that the metallic wire could be seen peeking through from underneath the layer of skin.

Then, he spent time carving down that sentence around the location where the metallic wire was poking out. He used a question mark to decorate it, and then, all they needed to do was wait for the other party to bite the bait.

"If you’ve left behind this message, why are you covering most of it with his shirt?" Flashes of Sword asked when he saw what Feng Bujue was doing.

"If I just leave it in the open, they will be able to see what I’ve written from afar," Feng Bujue said. "But if I cover the whole message completely, they might not discover this message."

After he was done, he used the man’s shirt to wipe his hands and stood up. "Leaving it half-showing like this means that they will squat down and lift up the tank top to see what it is. Then... as long as they have normal sight, they will notice this end of the metallic wire poking out."

"How can you be so confident that they will tweak with the wire?" Flashes of Sword asked.

"Who said I am confident that they will do something like that?" Feng Bujue asked back.

"Huh?" Flashes of Sword did not seem to understand what he meant.

"Does this look like an obvious trap to you?"

"Hmm... It does not."

"Why doesn’t it?"

Flashes of Sword tried to follow his jump in thought. "Traps should be placed in a location where the enemy must pass, and there should be an element of surprise to it, like hiding it behind a door."

Feng Bujue nodded. "You’re right."

"I’m right?" Flashes of Sword still did not quite get it.

"I will give you another example," Feng Bujue said. "Do you still remember that treasure chest from earlier where we received the side quest?"Fôllôw new stories at novelhall.com

"Of course, I do."

"If we opened the chest and it led to an explosion, does that mean that we have triggered a trap?"

"The system would not do something like that," Flashes of Sword replied. "There is no chance for the players to avoid something like that. If the chest really exploded, there would have been a hint about that before the players opened it."

"Oh," Feng Bujue said. "Then, am I the system?"

"Hmm..."

"Do I look like someone who would be kind enough to provide hints to our enemy?"

"This..."

"Other than that, there is another reason why you have absolute faith that opening the chest will not trigger an instant death," Feng Bujue added.

"That is because..." Flashes of Sword followed Feng Bujue’s explanation and came up with this supposition. "The room represents an optional quest. We could have ignored the door and walked away down the other path. Even if we chose to return to kill the monster inside the room later, we would still be given the choice to open the chest or not."

Feng Bujue pointed at the dead body. "This body is left lying on the ground. They could ignore it and skip that message. In fact, even if they see it, they could choose not to touch that metallic wire."

Flashes of Sword scratched his head. He believed that he was beginning to understand it. "So, this... is some kind of mind trick?"

Feng Bujue was already walking away. He signaled for his teammate to follow. As he walked away, he said, "To make someone do something that might appear unnecessary and is actually unbeneficial to them, first, you have to make them believe that the activity itself is a choice. They are not forced into doing it. And then, this activity must look ’normal’ on the surface, and normal here means that... it shouldn’t be too difficult because that might be a deterrent. However, it also can’t be too easy because it would easily raise suspicion.

"For example, if you want to murder someone, the victim will naturally struggle. That is a kind of ’normal’. But an overly violent struggle will give you pause, while the victim being absolutely calm will make you suspect that there is something up their sleeves.

"If, for example, you want to go inside a facility to plant a bomb, an overly strict security protocol might cause you to give up on your plan, but a complete lack of security will cause you to suspect that it is a trap..."

Feng Bujue licked his lips and coughed twice. "So, I’ve hidden the grenade inside the body, and the metallic wire to trigger it is placed at somewhere where they are free to touch it or not. I did not leave my message on the surface nor did I carve it on the body’s arse so that they would have to work to find it. Finally... I merely left them a surprise that they might not expect."

He was talking about the man who was possessed by the octopus creature.

"What... Mon... Monster? Oh, oh... god." Hank’s body would not stop shaking. It looked like the man was on the verge of tears. "No wonder they said they’d seen something weird..."

"What kind of vehicle did you use to get here?" Feng Bujue asked another question.

"Vehicle?" Hank did not seem to understand the meaning of that term.

"What did you use to travel here?" Feng Bujue asked in another manner.

"It is the ’Shark Coach’. All the scavengers use that," Hank answered.

"Is that something like a boat or a car?" Flashes of Sword asked.

"Car?" Hank looked at them with confusion.

Feng Bujue shook his head and sighed before continuing the interrogation. "So, you were tasked with staying on this Shark Coach while the other four teammates went to explore the lab. Since you have lost contact with them, you decided to come down from the Shark Coach as well?"

"Yes." Hank nodded carefully.

"Then, why did you attack us?" Flashes of Sword asked.

"You... You are..." Hank looked at them fearfully. "Because you are outsiders..."

"Can you explain what exactly outsiders are?"

"Demons!" Hank replied. "People from outside the village!"

"So, how did you know we are outsiders?" Feng Bujue was curious.

"Your clothes..." Hank said. "I’ve not seen clothes like yours before, and you are able to survive here without the protective suit."

"Oh?" Feng Bujue raised his brow. "Does this mean that you will die once you take in the air here?"

"Of course! Only the village can provide us with breathable air! The air outside the village is lethal! It is the poison released by outsiders!" Hank claimed loudly.

Feng Bujue stood up and sidled over to Flashes of Sword. He whispered, "Do you still remember how the tenth installment of the Friday the 13th series started?"

"What’s your point?" Flashes of Sword sighed. "In any case, I’m sure what you said is right..."

"That means you do not remember anything about it." Feng Bujue pointed out.

"Isn’t that a given? Who would remember details from an old movie that they can’t even remember since they saw it so long ago?" Flashes of Sword said, but once the words left his lips, he realized something and added, "Fine, you probably would remember it..."

"I indeed remember it. When the movie first started, the team members from the scientific team from space noticed that they could take in the air from inside the lab. So, they removed their helmets. Of course... they studied the quality of the air and the microorganisms around them first."

"Get to the point please," Flashes of Sword urged.

"The point is," Feng Bujue said softly while using the corner of his eyes to glance at Hank, who was curled into a ball by the wall, "the guy before us, just like I predicted earlier, should be the descendent of the survivors on Old Earth. But for some weird reason, his physique did not evolve to become stronger due to the environment. If anything, he’s showing signs of regression. Even the people who have migrated to space can breathe the air in this lab without much issue, but the air here is lethal for him."

"Is that weird?" Flashes of Sword asked.

"Do you believe in Darwin’s theories?" Feng Bujue asked him back.

"Er..." Flashes of Sword said. "Fine, I admit I am not that good in the field of biology, but... I believe you are trying to say that this situation does not match the understanding of natural selection?"

"The physical condition of human beings who live in an artificial environment on a spaceship is similar to the human beings who left Earth four hundred years ago," Feng Bujue extrapolated. "But this group of survivors who survived amid the horrible condition on Earth look like they’re going to die from taking in secondhand smoke. Also, do you still remember the man who was killed by the octopus monster before?"

"You mean the man whom you defiled by chopping off his head, forcing a grenade into his body, and carving a bunch of words on his stomach?" Flashes of Sword narrowed his eyes. "It will be very difficult to forget him..."

"That guy’s height and weight is about the same as Hank, extremely frail and lanky," Feng Bujue observed.

"So?"

"But they’re Caucasian... Let me remind you, in our world, the average male height in western Eurpoean countries is around 1.8 meters, and the ones from northern Europe go close to 1.9 meters," Feng Bujue explained.

"Don’t you think it is normal for them to suffer from malnutrition? After all, the planet has been destroyed," Flashes of Sword argued. "Furthermore, this is just a game. Why are you so hung up over these details?"

Feng Bujue shook his head. "I don’t know how much of the population is left on this Old Earth, but one thing’s for certain... there has to be some problem at Hank’s Village."

"Brother Feng... I hope you haven’t forgotten that we’re here for a 2v2 Killing Game, not to save some kind of mysterious village."

Feng Bujue raised his hand and extended three fingers, listing off three reasons seriously. "Their village possesses air that will not deplete our Life Points, they have the technology to create these Anti-gravity Guns, and finally, their villagers are as fragile as they come."

"Oh... so you’re not going to save the village—you’re going to ransack them?" Flashes of Sword finally got the message.

"Whether it is to save or to ransack, that remains to be seen," Feng Bujue replied. "Now we need to get on Hank’s Shark Coach and leave this lab. Then we will have the upper hand. Before the patience or the potions of the Zombie Blade members run out, we have many strategic options to choose from, and we have nothing to lose."