Chapter 337: Self-Awareness

"Too weird?"

Ning Zhe raised his head, his gaze sweeping past the railing of the viewing platform toward the empty audience seats below.

Lan Shiwen, oh Lan Shiwen, how many times have you "returned" now?

At this moment, Ning Zhe felt somewhat fortunate that he had forcibly tied Lan Shiwen to his chariot in time. It was just a pity that, looking back, he hadn't pried open Yan Yukuan's skull to check when they were in the Chenyu Valley Prison; otherwise, he could have discovered the existence of the "Taishui Worm" back then...

This was unavoidable, though. Who would think, for no reason at all, that one had to crack open a corpse to find clues hidden within the cranial cavity?

Little Lan probably lost his life over this more than once.

A flash of gray-white color crossed Ning Zhe's mind. He remembered the cemetery outside Gubei Town. When he had dug up the grave of the security guard named Tian Chengyun, the urn beneath the stone slab was completely empty.

Ning Zhe had originally thought this was just a contingency plan by someone to prevent Tian Chengyun from being resurrected by a Gridder investigating the matter. Now, it seemed the reasons behind it were far deeper than he had imagined.

In the short span of a few seconds, Ning Zhe thought of many things. It was as if an invisible thread was twisting and winding, stringing together one after another seemingly unrelated events.

Suddenly, a crisp sound came from the room behind the curtain, interrupting Ning Zhe's train of thought.

A new loser had appeared.

Closing his notebook and tucking it into his chest, Ning Zhe didn't write a reply to Xia Yubing but instead lifted the curtain to look inside. He saw a man gritting his teeth and cursing "shit" under his breath. On the outer wall of the wine glass placed before him, golden droplets were flowing down, looking like a few snails crawling on a tree trunk.

As expected, under the joint targeting of Betang and Miss Mei Lin, the first loser was indeed him.

There were only 4 players on the field in total, and with 2 of them targeting you, how could you possibly end up well?

Ning Zhe walked slowly into the room, the silk curtain falling behind him. The withered yellow straw effigy still lay quietly in the center of the gambling table. Opposite the table, the Gambler had already extended its pale, corpse-spotted palm.

The atmosphere at the gambling table became tense. Everyone's eyes were focused on this man who had "stumbled" into the casino, waiting to see what kind of stake he would produce.

"Th-this, this is for you... is this okay?"

The man cautiously unbuckled his wristwatch, placed it on the table, and pushed it toward the Gambler. His face, wearing a forced smile, carried a hint of expectation and a trace of sycophancy, as if begging the Gambler to show mercy.

Seeing this, Miss Mei Lin frowned: "What's going on?"

Was that watch a Gridded item? A Gridded item with the same value as the straw effigy from the Flimmisret family? It didn't look like it.

Clearly, the Gambler didn't think so either.

The thin, long palm remained suspended above the gambling table, shaking up and down toward the man, carrying a hint of urging.

"Don't play dumb anymore," Betang said. "If you can't produce a stake of equal value, the Gambler won't let it go. Gambling requires fairness; you can't be unaware of that, right?"

The man opened his mouth, looked at the straw effigy on the table and the mechanical watch inlaid with emeralds in his hand, and said incredulously: "This can't be, right? That makes no sense! You mean to say that in the eyes of the devil, the value of this watch of mine isn't even worth a crude scarecrow?"

Miss Mei Lin glanced at his watch and said indifferently: "The Aurora series mechanical watch from the luxury brand 'Goldmary,' and it's a limited edition inlaid with emeralds. There are only 512 in the world, and it's long been priceless. In terms of conventional luxury goods, it is indeed quite valuable... but that scarecrow is not a conventional luxury item. It is not something that can be bought with money."

"The only thing qualified to be placed on the same table as it to compare value is life." Betang extended an index finger and pointed to his own temple: "Human life."

In the face of life, so-called luxury goods, the precious mechanical watch limited to 512 pieces worldwide, were nothing more than ordinary pieces of carved metal.

"How could it be like this..." Listening to the two of them, a look of despair appeared on the man's face. Between gritted teeth, he was full of disbelief: "It's just a broken scarecrow, why say it's as precious as life? What kind of joke is this?" In reality, it was even more precious than life... at least in the Gambler's value judgment system, that was the case.

Neither Miss Mei Lin nor Betang spoke again. The room fell into silence once more, with only the man's murmurs of disbelief faintly audible. On the gambling table, the Gambler's palm shook again, urging him to hand over the stake quickly so it could continue this gambling game.

"Interesting." Ning Zhe sat back in his seat, observing with interest the slightly dazed expression on the man's face. Clearly, he had been hit hard by what was just said.

Yet, even so, Ning Zhe still couldn't see a trace of acting on his face. Every twitch of muscle, every drop of cold sweat sliding down, was so natural, without any hint of falsehood.

He might really not be acting.

"This guy is probably really just a mortal who knows nothing."

Ning Zhe concluded in his heart: "Just like Yan Yukuan in the Chenyu Valley Prison, this person is likely also a tool-man whose memory was altered by Fen Wu. He came to this theater with some purpose, and like Yan Yukuan, he doesn't know his memory has been tampered with."

This man truly didn't know about Gridders, Gridded items, or any of the weird, supernatural stuff. There was no such messy business in his memory; he was just a mortal with a bit of money who knew nothing. Everything he had shown so far was a genuine expression of his feelings, requiring no acting.

"But if Fen Wu put him here, there must be a reason."

As Ning Zhe pondered, the Gambler's palm shook again; it was already becoming impatient.

Seeing this, the man's face turned pale. With trembling hands, he took off the ring on his finger, fished his wallet out from his chest, and spread all his cash and bank cards on the table. His expression was one of despair mixed with a faint, ethereal hope. He pushed all these things toward the center of the gambling table in one go:

"These are for you, all of these are for you. Everything I have is for you. All my valuable things are here. Let me go, please let me go..."

The Gambler turned a deaf ear, simply standing up silently. Its tall skeleton cast a huge shadow under the light.

"No, no, I beg you, don't..."

Ning Zhe rested his chin on one hand, watching the man who had already fallen into a mental breakdown, and suddenly thought:

"According to the explanation given by Lan Shiwen, the Gambler's appearance in the opera house was not a random supernatural event, but one guided by human intervention. The person who guided this is very likely Fen Wu."

"If it is Fen Wu, then everything that has happened so far is aimed at me. To be precise, it is aimed at Zhao You—Fen Wu is very unlucky; he needs the rules of Zhao You to seek good fortune and avoid disaster to make up for his own flaws."

And Zhao You had already been lost to the Gambler.

"In other words, Fen Wu's goal has been initially achieved. He successfully used the Gambler's power to strip Zhao You away from me. The next step should be to find a way to transfer Zhao You from the Gambler's hands to himself."

How to transfer it? — Gambling.

"As long as one opens a gambling game with the Gambler with 'a ghost' as the stake and wins, one can win Zhao You over. And to get the Gambler to put up a ghost as a stake, one needs to possess a stake of equal value oneself."

Which means...

Ning Zhe's gaze toward the man gradually became ambiguous.

This man, this 'mortal' who was brainwashed by Fen Wu without even realizing it, was at this very moment carrying at least one 【True Ghost】.

(End of chapter)