Chapter 359: Calamity Rule

"Disaster Year?"

"That's right. In this game, I'm playing the role of the final moment of the year—the Nian Shou—and you all must do everything you can to defeat me."

After saying this, Di Gou pulled a small remote control from his pocket and pressed the button on it.

Suddenly, three incandescent lights illuminated inside the central cylindrical glass tube, arranged in a line and suspended in mid-air.

"These three lights represent my 'health points,'" Di Gou turned back and said. "Each of you four will use one 'qian' per round, and that counts as the end of a round. The game will have a total of eight rounds."

"Hold on a second..."

Su Shan felt that Di Gou was about to finish explaining the rules, but the most important part hadn't been mentioned yet. "If these three lights are your 'health points,' how do we make them go out?"

"With your 'qian,'" Di Gou replied. "Some 'qian' will deal 'damage' to me, which means they can extinguish the lights above my head. As long as you manage to extinguish all three lights within the eight rounds, you'll all be considered winners. No matter what happens, the game will end after eight rounds."

The four girls fell silent upon hearing this. It seemed like the rules had been explained thoroughly, but they still felt something was missing.

"Hang on..." Qin Dingdong said, "I get the basic rules; it sounds just like playing cards. But are you not participating?"

"What?"

"Don't you need to use 'qian'?" Qin Dingdong asked. "Are the four of us just going to gang up on you? You'll just sit in the middle and take the hits?"

"Of course I'm participating," Di Gou said. "As I mentioned earlier, once all four of you have used your 'qian,' that marks the end of a round. And I can use one 'qian' per round as well. Sounds fair, doesn't it?"

Su Shan quickly seized on the key point of that statement and asked, "So, when do you use your 'qian'—before us or after us?"

"That depends on my strategy," Di Gou said. "I can use my 'qian' at any time during the round, but only one per round."

Lin Geng noticed that this Di Gou was different from the other "Zodiac" figures; he seemed to answer every question asked.

Thinking of this, Lin Geng stepped forward and asked, "Then I want to know, in the game, how are you going to kill us?"

The question hit the mark, causing Di Gou's expression to change slightly.

"I..." Di Gou thought for a moment and said, "Well, since I'm taking my job seriously, I'll tell you everything. The 'qian' in my hand is slightly different from yours. I have eight 'qian,' each representing one of eight 'Zai E.'"

Su Shan nodded upon hearing this. "So, you're the Nian Shou that brings 'Zai E'?"

"That's correct," Di Gou said. "My 'Zai E' could potentially kill people, so you'd better be careful."

The four girls fell silent again. Once the game started, they'd be in a state where they couldn't communicate, so they had to think of any questions they might have now.

"What about these four glass houses..." Su Shan pointed to the four square glass houses. "What's the order for drawing 'qian'?"

Di Gou frowned at the question. "Are you asking too many questions?"

"I..."

Before Su Shan could say anything, Qin Dingdong stepped forward first and said to Di Gou, "It's your fault for not explaining the rules clearly in the first place, right? If we go in like this without knowing the order, everything will just turn into chaos. What then?"

"I always handle my work meticulously—how could I forget to explain the rules?" Di Gou said with a furrowed brow. "I think I've said enough for you to participate in the game."

"Meticulously?" Qin Dingdong laughed. "Di Gou, I have something to say, and I'm not sure if I should."

"You can question my character, but you can't question my work ability," Di Gou replied irritably.

Qin Dingdong snorted and pointed to the nearby glass, where there was a dirty handprint.

"You keep saying you're meticulous, but when you switched to a new group of participants, you didn't even wipe the glass?"

"Huh?" Di Gou was stunned, and his dog ears twitched. "I didn't wipe the glass?"

"See for yourself," Qin Dingdong said, pointing to the handprint. "You've given us such a poor game experience. We're not complaining; we just want to ask a few more questions about the rules. Is that not allowed?"

Di Gou walked over, looked at the handprint on the glass, and slowly furrowed his brow.

"Am I right?" Qin Dingdong patted Di Gou on the back. "Answer one more question for us, and we'll call it even."

Di Gou glanced at Su Shan and Qin Dingdong, then finally nodded. "Fine, go ahead."

"We asked earlier—what's the order for drawing 'qian' in these glass houses?"

Di Gou listened and pointed to the pink glass house. "The person in the pink glass house goes first each round, then clockwise: pink, followed by green, orange, and blue."

"What do the colors represent?" Su Shan asked.

"I don't know," Di Gou said coldly, cutting her off. "I've explained all the rules now. The rest is up to your fate."

Di Gou slowly walked to the central glass cylinder in the room and said to the others from inside the door, "Please quickly choose which room you'll enter. The game will start in five minutes."

With that, he closed the door behind him, and a complex lock clicked into place on the glass door.

"This dead dog..." Qin Dingdong glared at him unhappily. "He's got some nerve, locking himself in like that. He can't hear what we're discussing now, so this is our chance to outsmart him."

"I'm not so sure about that..." Su Shan looked worriedly in Di Gou's direction. "The fact that he's so confidently locking himself in just proves he has absolute confidence. He thinks he has a high chance of killing us in the game ahead."

"So what should we do?" Qin Dingdong looked at the group. Based on the "Human Level" games they'd played earlier that day, this team of four was quite smart. If they could team up properly, taking on a single Di Gou shouldn't be a problem.

"Let's pick our positions first," Su Shan said. "I'm planning to be the 'first player.' If possible, I'll figure out the full rules of the game right away and find a way to signal it to you all."

"Signal..."

"Even though we won't be able to hear each other, we can still use hand gestures or lip movements for simple communication," Su Shan emphasized. "After all, we're in glass houses, so we can see each other's every move."

Zhang Chenze, who had been quiet for a while, paused and said, "Di Gou could have put us in enclosed rooms, but he built glass houses instead. I think there's something suspicious about that."

"Even if there is, we can't figure it out now," Su Shan said. "The priority is to choose our rooms and start the game. From here on, we'll each have to rely on our own skills."