Chapter 308: A Way to Break the Situation
Hearing Chen Junnan's lazy drawl, the girl was fuming.
"Hey... can you take this a little more seriously? We could die at any moment now..."
"Would being serious stop me from dying?" Chen Junnan scratched his ear. "Miss, what's your name?"
"I..." The girl sighed. "Xu Qian."
"Hey, I had an old classmate named Xu Qian too. What a coincidence, huh?"
Xu Qian was silent for a moment, then said helplessly, "It's a pretty common name. If you don't have anything important to say, can you stop forcing small talk? What do you actually want?"
"I just think this game is making me drowsy." Chen Junnan sighed. "How about we spice things up a bit?"
"Spice things up?" Xu Qian was a bit confused. "At a time when we could die at any moment, you care about whether things are interesting or not?"
"Of course I do." Chen Junnan said with a smile. "You're a girl, so you can call the Earth Snake over, right?"
"Not exactly..." Xu Qian was taken aback. "Earth Snake said before that only when I feel like I'm about to die should I call him..."
"For help." Chen Junnan interrupted. "Right. So go ahead and call."
"What the hell would I call him for?!" This wasn't the first time Xu Qian wanted to hang up. "Why should I call him for help?"
"To help me get him over here!"
"Why don't you call him yourself?!"
"I'm a guy!"
Even though they had only talked on the phone a few times, they were already on the verge of arguing.
"So what if you're a guy?!" Xu Qian sounded pretty furious. "Does calling the referee have anything to do with gender?"
"How would that old lecher listen to me? Sister Qian, just help me out."
"You just called him an old lecher yourself!" Xu Qian shouted. "And Earth Snake just said that if women 'perform well,' he'll help them. That doesn't sound like anything good at all, does it? Why would I call him?"
"Hey! Don't worry!" Chen Junnan chuckled. "Once you get him over here, I'll talk to him. I definitely won't let anything happen to you."
"But you don't seem trustworthy at all..." Xu Qian sighed. "You can't even get out of your room. What guarantee do I have that nothing will happen to me?"
"Then what do you want me to do to guarantee it?" Chen Junnan was at a loss too. "You're the only one I can contact right now."
"How about this... Wait a few more rounds." Xu Qian said. "If you can keep me safe, I'll help you call Earth Snake over."
"Alright, fine." Chen Junnan nodded regretfully. "I'll hang up now. Stay in touch."
Without another word, Xu Qian hung up. Chen Junnan reluctantly put the phone down.
He walked over to the chair and sat down, letting his hands rest naturally on either side of the screen.
The moment his hands touched the two buttons, a strange sensation gradually emerged.
"Eh...?"
He placed both thumbs on the two buttons and found that they fit perfectly.
"This... this is..."
As he hesitated, the phone suddenly rang.
「Ding-ling-ling——!!!」
"Ah, damn it!" Chen Junnan was startled again. "Son of a bitch, one of these days I'm going to pull out your phone line..."
He picked up the phone. "Hello? Junnan's Earth Snake office. Go ahead."
"Chen Junnan, what's going on over there?" Yun Yao asked, puzzled. "The line was busy just now."
"Busy? Oh, a prank call." Chen Junnan shook his head. "Got a question?"
"That's right." Yun Yao nodded. "This time the question is, 'Does a year have four seasons?'"
"Seriously? What the hell, is he babysitting us?" Chen Junnan cursed. "I really want to have a talk with that old bastard—does he even have any damn education or not?"
"Also... I asked the person ahead of me. That impatient girl said the person ahead of her was a man with a low, muffled voice, but she didn't know exactly who it was."
"Is it that 'Zhong Zhen' you mentioned?" Chen Junnan asked.
"Probably not." Yun Yao denied it. "You should have heard that man's voice. Even though he's in his thirties, his voice still sounds fairly young."
As Chen Junnan listened, he carved the name "Muffled Voice Guy" into the table with his nail.
"Almost there. We've already got the positions of eight people." After carving, he said to Yun Yao, "Big star, for this question, let's pick 'No.'"
"No...?" Yun Yao thought for a moment, then asked, "Chen Junnan, the question is 'Does a year have four seasons?' Are you sure you want to answer 'No'?"
"I'm sure." Chen Junnan confirmed.
"But isn't that wrong?" Yun Yao pondered. "Is it okay to get it wrong?"
"To be honest, I got the first question wrong." Chen Junnan paused. "And for the second question, I didn't even understand it, so I probably got that wrong too."
"Huh?"
"For the first question, I picked 'Yes.' I admitted I was a girl, but I didn't get any punishment." He laughed. "There were five girls on site, but the final answer was 'Yes.' What does that tell you?"
Following Chen Junnan's train of thought, Yun Yao considered it and replied, "Two possibilities. The first is that at least two men lied. The second is that someone behind changed the question."
"That's right." Chen Junnan continued. "Just like I thought from the beginning, 'right' and 'wrong' don't really matter in this game. Because in the second round, I directly changed the question and made most people follow my choice. If that answer had been wrong, then all of you would be wrong right now."
Yun Yao still didn't understand. "But what's the reason you're choosing 'No'?"
Chen Junnan slowly tilted his head, pinning the phone between his cheek and shoulder, then stretched the phone cord over to the display. He placed his hands on the buttons on the left and right sides of the screen.
"Big star, did you ever play 'Little Overlord' when you were a kid?"
"'Little Overlord'...?" Yun Yao was stunned. "Sorry, I've never even heard of it."
"Great, there's a generation gap again, huh?" Chen Junnan thought for a moment. "I remember you were born after 2000?"
"After 2000? Do I look that old...?" Yun Yao sighed. "I was born in 2011."
"Oh, 2011?" Chen Junnan nodded. "Then you definitely missed out on 'Little Overlord.' By your time, the PlayStation was already on its fourth generation, right?"
"Chen Junnan... Can you get to the point?"
"Alright, alright!" Chen Junnan laughed. "Big star, I just had a sudden thought."
He pressed the left button marked "Yes" and the right button marked "No," then said, "What do you say—maybe these two buttons on our screens are actually 'Left' and 'Right'? And what we think of as 'Yes' and 'No' is really just moving something huge left or right?"
"What...?" Yun Yao frowned and quickly thought it over. Soon her eyes widened.
That was right.
This line of reasoning was completely correct.
Yun Yao did a quick mental calculation and said, "Suppose I'm '0.' Choosing 'Yes' gives '-1,' choosing 'No' gives '+1.' Then the person who died would be at '-2,' and the giant sphere would now be at '1.'"
Chen Junnan was stunned for a long time after hearing this, then said, "Big star, slow down. I can't keep up."