Chapter 49 Late-Night Chat

Deep in the night, Qin Changsheng leaned against the bedside, gazing at the brilliantly illuminated town in the distance.

Only at moments like this could he temporarily detach himself from the unnatural reality and enjoy a brief slice of tranquility. It felt just like any other night he had ever spent; the bustling prosperity outside the window had never belonged to him, with a single pane of glass separating two entirely different worlds.

He had always been alone—isolated, yet accustomed to it.

Qin Changsheng sighed, genuinely unable to fall asleep. The deaths he had witnessed during the daytime were flashing through his mind scene by scene. The aftermath of retrospection is often where the torment of the human heart truly begins.

Those pairs of hands reaching out toward him, those faces contorted with despair.

*I could have saved them,* Qin Changsheng thought.

Life slips away so effortlessly, like a fragile, illusory bubble. None of this was normal, yet he was deeply trapped within it, utterly unable to escape.

When would the next game begin? The Monarch refused to tell them anything, as if intentionally heightening their inner fear and anxiety. Knowing you are going to die without knowing when the Grim Reaper will arrive is far more terrifying than knowing a fixed date of doom.

Qin Changsheng told himself repeatedly that he ought to sleep, but slumber refused to descend. Instead, someone else came knocking.

"Tap, tap, tap."

The sound of knocking echoed through the room. Qin Changsheng leaped down from the window ledge and walked toward the door with a puzzled frown.

"Who is it?"

It was already very late. Although there were no clocks, based on the fatigue of his body, Qin Changsheng could roughly gauge the time. At such a late hour, could there really be someone else awake just like him?

Qin Changsheng opened the door to reveal a timid figure standing outside.

"I... can I come in?"

Looking at Wu Yutong, who stood there as helpless as a small animal, Qin Changsheng was momentarily stunned before his expression softened, and he stepped aside. "Sure, come on in."

Wu Yutong was wearing pajamas and hugging a fluffy toy bear. At Qin Changsheng's gesture, she stepped cautiously into the room. Every inch of her radiated unease, her tear-rimmed eyes suggesting she might break down crying at any second.

Qin Changsheng closed the door and turned to face Wu Yutong. He had no idea what to say; letting her in had been purely a reflex. Having lived as a bachelor for eighteen years, he had never spent time alone with a girl in private, and the moment the door clicked shut, his heart accelerated wildly.

Giving a soft cough, Qin Changsheng managed an awkward smile. "It's so late, why aren't you sleeping?"

He regretted the words the instant they left his mouth. Sleeping? Where was she supposed to sleep? This was his bedroom! Telling a girl to go to sleep in his own bedroom carried entirely too much ambiguity!

Qin Changsheng mentally berated himself over and over. Fortunately, Wu Yutong herself seemed to pay no mind to the phrasing. She raised her head to look at Qin Changsheng, her eyes glistening with tears, looking utterly pitiful.

So beautiful... Ah, ah... Damn it... She's seriously gorgeous...

For a fleeting second, Qin Changsheng felt as though his sanity was about to snap. On such a restless night, a sudden nocturnal raid by a beautiful girl, a lone man and woman shut together in a single room... The trope was undeniable; the rhythm of this situation clearly pointed to something happening!

Watching the silent Wu Yutong, Qin Changsheng swallowed hard, his hand twitching forward with involuntary desire.

Now that he thought about it, Wu Yutong was probably a bit older than him. Yet no matter how he looked at it, he couldn't help seeing her as an endearing younger sister. Her expression was so pure and flawless, her skin as smooth and white as lard, her lips as red as cinnabar...

Since Wu Yutong herself hadn't objected, it meant she tacitly agreed...

This beastly train of thought was abruptly shattered by a sharp pain piercing his scalp. Qin Changsheng snapped back to reality instantly, wailing in pain as he frantically yanked at his own hair and shouted a certain name at the top of his lungs:

"Mo Mo—!!"

The sudden roar startled Wu Yutong so badly that she took a step back, nearly tumbling to the floor.

To her astonishment, the dreadlocks atop Qin Changsheng's head began to rise one by one, writhing like lively tentacles before converging into a gaping maw filled with sharp teeth. The giant mouth stretched open as wide as it possibly could, and then, it let out an extraordinarily long yawn.

"Haaaaah—!!!"

Mo Mo extended two tentacles to rub eyes that nobody even knew where they were located, and smacked its lips. "Finally got a full sleep! I was dead tired before!"

"What the hell!" Qin Changsheng widened his eyes. "How are you getting more and more articulate? And where on earth did you go just now?"

"Just now? I was sleepy, so I took a nap." Mo Mo glanced left and right. "Well, holy crap, where did you drag me to? Is this still the mainland?"

"Alright, alright, you better talk less. Weren't you pretty quiet before? Right now you're so loud my head is about to explode..."

Mo Mo's few remarks effortlessly destroyed the atmosphere that had just been built. Qin Changsheng turned around helplessly, only to find that Wu Yutong was already gone, having apparently been frightened away.

*Sigh! You completely ruined my moment!*

Qin Changsheng felt exasperated at Mo Mo's lack of cooperation, but Mo Mo cared not a whit and instead pushed its luck further. "Hey, master, I'm hungry. Let's go grab a midnight snack!"

"It's this late, where are we supposed to get a midnight snack?!"

Just as Qin Changsheng finished speaking, he suddenly remembered that everything in this house was arranged by the Monarch. Since his romantic prospects for the night had vanished, he might as well find some other amusement—like going to harass that damned Monarch.

"Fine, let's go eat." Having made up his mind, Qin Changsheng slammed his hand on the table and stood up. "Damn it, if I'm not sleeping, nobody else is sleeping either!"

Through the second half of the night, the sounds of chewing and swallowing echoed until morning, sounding eerily like the resentful whimpers of a jilted youth.

Everyone was gathered in the living room. Under the Monarch's arrangement, last night's dining table had been cleared away, replaced by a massive coffee table in the center of the room, surrounded by several large sofas.

Everyone's faces were etched with fatigue; judging by their looks, none of them had slept well. Lu Qingyu carried a pot of tea out from the kitchen, placed it on the coffee table, and called out to the group: "Come have some, it'll wake you up."

Qin Changsheng sat on the sofa with his head tilted back, glanced at the teapot, and immediately gave up. Having eaten a whole table's worth of delicacies out of spite last night, he was currently too stuffed to speak, let alone drink anything without risking overflow.

Cao Mengmeng and Wu Yutong each took a cup of tea, took a single sip, and quickly set them back down.

"What's wrong, not to your taste?" Lu Qingyu asked in confusion as she picked up her own cup and took a sip, then shook her head. "I think it's quite nice, though?"

"It's not the taste, it's my stomach." Cao Mengmeng sighed. "It hasn't even been half a day, and I'm already being tortured to death. Exactly when is the next game going to start?"

Standing nearby, the Monarch smiled slightly. "I am afraid I cannot tell you that, my apologies."

"If the game never starts, does that mean we're supposed to stay here forever?" Cao Mengmeng frowned.

"Wouldn't that be pretty great? You spent your points on so many games yesterday, enough to keep you entertained," Qin Changsheng teased.

"How many days can our points possibly last? Let alone the others. Once the points run out, either they starve to death or they turn on each other and kill one another," Cao Mengmeng retorted. "The longer you stay in a place like this, the easier it is to go insane."

"Forget about them, let's worry about ourselves," Lu Qingyu interjected.

"By the way, didn't you participate in the last match? Don't you know how long the waiting period is?"

"I don't know," Lu Qingyu shook her head. "The waiting time between matches is completely random. Sometimes it's an hour or two, sometimes four or five days, and occasionally even three or four months."

"If we have to wait that long, we're done for," Qin Changsheng bolted upright.

"That's probably part of the game as well—rationally allocating resources and hanging on until the end during the waiting periods," Lu Qingyu said. "Don't be too pessimistic, though. The rest of us still have quite a few points left. Maybe if we just wait a little longer..."

Before Lu Qingyu could finish her sentence, a sudden chime of bells rang out.

"Where's that bell coming from?" Qin Changsheng stood up, walked to the window, and looked outside. "There isn't even a clock tower in this place!"

"That's a bell sounding from the outside world," Lu Qingyu's expression suddenly turned grave. "And that bell means only one thing."

"The game is about to begin!"