Chapter 257: The Hidden Lie
Both of their emotions were getting out of control. In the chaos, no one could tell who pushed whom first. The blade drew blood.
The burly man's knife was embedded in the old man's chest.
The onlookers witnessing this scene all took a step back in unison.
The old man also looked down in disbelief at the knife that had appeared in his chest, letting out a light cough.
"You…" The knife-wielding man felt his mind go hazy, "Who told you to grab my knife?!"
The old man tried to argue something more, but instead he pitched forward and crashed to the ground, immediately falling still.
Everything had spiraled out of control.
Qi Xia watched the situation coldly, sensing a shift in the wind.
The knife-wielding man, who had originally represented the "interests of the poor," had now killed another "poor man" in front of everyone.
His regime had cracked before it could even stabilize.
It could only mean the knife-wielder wasn't smart enough. Sometimes a blade doesn't have to be used—it just needs to be held.
Just as the crowd was hesitating, an unexpected figure slowly walked over.
It was the "Earth Sheep," who had been standing in the center of the room all along.
Earth Sheep looked grimly at the dead "poor man," then raised his head to the knife-wielding man and said, "You've got some nerve. Who told you to keep killing?"
"Huh?"
The knife-wielding man was clearly taken aback. He had thought that "violence" was tacitly permitted here, but Earth Sheep seemed to forbid killing?
Earth Sheep crouched down to examine the stabbed old man, his eyes darting uncertainly.
If Qi Xia's guess was right, he was about to start lying.
"He's beyond saving." Earth Sheep looked up at the man and said, "As punishment, I will impose sanctions on you."
"S-Sanctions?!" The man stumbled back in fear, "What the hell?! That rule wasn't in what you said!"
Earth Sheep stood up without any explanation and swiftly slapped the man.
The man's body remained still, but his head spun a full circle on his neck, his expression frozen in place.
Earth Sheep took a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his hands and said, "I hope everyone understands that this is my game. You need to follow the rules I set. If anyone else dares to do something outrageous, I won't hold back. I'm confiscating this man's fans. You can all disperse."
With that, Earth Sheep took five fans from the man's pocket, then pushed through the onlookers and returned to the center of the room.
The crowd quickly scattered, no longer daring to have any designs on the "rich man" before them.
Seeing Earth Sheep's performance, Qi Xia slowly reached up to stroke his chin.
Why was Earth Sheep indifferent when a "rich man" was killed, but stepped in to punish when a "poor man" was killed?
Wasn't that too strange?
At this moment, Qin Dingdong's teammate helped her up. Seeing that the situation was temporarily safe, the two exchanged a glance with Qi Xia and quickly ran toward the exit.
Qi Xia watched them leave, and no one stepped forward to stop them.
After all, no one knew exactly what rules Earth Sheep had set.
Could they snatch fans or not? Could they kill or not?
Under this ambiguous set of rules, everyone's eyes were filled with confusion. The knife still stuck in the old man's chest remained untouched.
"Unless…"
Qi Xia seemed to realize what he had overlooked.
The reason these two dead men were treated differently wasn't because of their "poor" or "rich" status.
It was because of their status as "escaped" or "not yet escaped."
After all, the number of participants was even. To escape this place, participants had to form pairs.
So it didn't matter if an "escaped" person died, because they were no longer included in the count of "remaining people."
But if a "not yet escaped" person died… that would leave an odd number of remaining participants, ultimately causing one person to be left without a partner.
That's why Earth Sheep intervened.
The best way for him to bring the number back to even would be to kill one more person.
It was a bit strange, but Qi Xia felt the logic was reasonable enough.
Now he needed to focus on his own plan.
He currently held four "Sorrow" fans. For everything to go smoothly, he had to calculate the total number of "Sorrow" fans in the game.
Qi Xia walked to the center of the room and slowly closed his eyes.
In his mind, countless fans floated by, neatly arranged into four groups.
But after just a few seconds, he felt he had overlooked an important issue.
Earth Sheep had said that at the start, there were equal numbers of fans of each suit.
But there were fifty people at the scene, each starting with three fans. That meant in the first round, Earth Sheep had distributed 150 fans.
How could 150 fans be evenly divided among four suits?
That would be 37.5 fans per suit?
Wasn't that contradictory?
Had Earth Sheep lied about this?
"No… that shouldn't be the case," Qi Xia frowned and murmured to himself, "Lying about such a key point would be fatal. It would ruin the game's reputation… there would be no 'repeat customers' here."
Besides… if the number of fans could be lied about, the optimal distribution would be 147:1:1:1.
One suit with 147 fans, and the other three with one each. That would mean at most two people could escape the whole game. In other words, the settings of fifty people, 150 fans, and a game of deception would all become meaningless.
It would be better to just let everyone draw lots to decide life and death. So Earth Sheep probably didn't lie on such a crucial point.
So where was his lie?
Qi Xia looked down at the four "Sorrow" fans in his hand. He knew that if he couldn't calculate the remaining number of "Sorrow" fans in the field, he would never win this game.
But the number 37.5 was a dead end.
Then there was only one other possibility…
At this moment, Qi Xia was standing in the center of the room, able to see everyone present.
He slowly opened his eyes, quickly counted the number of participants inside the room, and then showed a strange expression.
The number of participants still standing was exactly forty.
That seemed normal at first glance, but upon closer thought, something wasn't right.
Among them, someone was clearly standing there dead. He couldn't be counted in the remaining number.
Qi Xia closed his eyes again and replayed everything that had happened in his mind.
At the very start of the game, four people immediately escaped. At that time, forty-six people should have been standing.
Half an hour later, the first pair of "rich men" escaped, leaving forty-four standing.
Then, the person who bought all the "Sorrow" fans lost his teammate and escaped alone, leaving forty-three.
Finally, Qin Dingdong and the Sichuan man escaped, leaving forty-one.
Deducting the bodies of one "rich man" and one old man, there should be thirty-nine people standing.
Qi Xia opened his eyes and scanned all the participants again.
Why were there forty people here?
From when exactly… had an extra participant appeared?
A strange feeling slowly rose in Qi Xia's heart.
Were there really fifty participants?
Qi Xia only knew that everyone had received three fans, but how many people had actually received them?
A group of fifty people was more massive than he had imagined. The crowd had never stood in neat rows. When you were in the middle of it, you couldn't count the numbers.
So the key problem lay here.
"Earth Sheep… you can't fool me…" Qi Xia slowly curled the corners of his mouth.
Now everything was clear.
This wasn't a game of fifty people. It was a game of fifty-one people.