Chapter 29: Giving the Middle Finger

The Instance was a Secret Room.

Hell was likely the largest Secret Room of all, trapping all Players inside.

From Chen Ran's perspective, since it was a Secret Room, there had to be a way to escape.

"The answer is hidden within the rules."

Chen Ran nodded. He did not ask what exactly was included in the Reward for ending the Instance.

He remained silent.

He simply watched Li Annan quietly, his gaze mocking, as if he were looking at a corpse.

"You..."

Unsettled by that stare, Li Annan could not help but swallow hard. "What is with that look? Have you forgotten what you just said?"

"Said what?" Chen Ran asked in return.

"You said that even if there were only two of us left, you would not use the Liar-Slayer to kill the Sheep!"

"Are you the Sheep?"

Hearing this, Li Annan widened his eyes and suddenly turned his head to look at the notice on the table.

'Rule Four: Anyone who uses verbal or physical means to expose their identity, or exposes the Cards on another person's table, will lose their qualification to sit at the gambling table.'

'If I admit I am the Sheep...'

'I will lose my qualification to stay at the gambling table!'

'If I do not admit to being the Sheep...'

'Chen Ran will hit me with a Judgment!'

'The reason he said he would not Judge the Sheep when only two remained was simply to coax the rules of the Instance and the 18th Level out of my mouth!'

Chen Ran took a leisurely drag of his Cigarette and said, "If you admit your identity, I will not use the Gun on the Scales of Judgment or the Liar-Slayer to kill you. Furthermore, I will play a life-and-death game with you off the table."

Saying so, he stood up and slowly walked over to where he had discarded the Liar-Slayer, reaching down to pick up the weapon.

"Wait!"

Li Annan's face looked terrible as he stammered, "I... I... I am the Sheep!"

Only then did Chen Ran return with a satisfied expression.

He walked up to the gambling table. On the table, it was Ma Wenjie's turn to draw a Card, but Ma Wenjie was already dead.

Chen Ran gathered all the Cards on the table. Out of the seventeen Cards, he picked out all the Shepherd Cards and Sheep Cards, tossing them aside.

"Actually, I have been guessing what your final trump card was."

"The fact that you dared to lie in advance means you had a guaranteed way to win when only two people remained."

"I thought about it over and over, and I noticed the rules never said picking and choosing Cards was forbidden."

"Therefore, I deduced that your ultimate move was to seize the right to deal when there were only two of us left. Then, you would toss out all the Shepherd Cards and Wolf Cards. That way, only Sheep Cards would remain, and no matter how we drew, you would win."

Having his plan exposed, Li Annan glared viciously at Chen Ran. "Now, you are the only one left at the gambling table. You have no Cards to draw, and no one to draw yours. Let me see how you plan to win against me!"

Chen Ran said nothing.

Holding six Wolf Cards in his hand, he dealt two Wolf Cards to himself. The next moment, the Scales of Judgment tilted frantically to the left, bottoming out completely.

The Gun on the tray fell off, landing right in front of Chen Ran. He picked it up and aimed the muzzle at a dumbfounded Li Annan.

"Wait!!!" Li Annan was terrified and hastily called out to stop Chen Ran from firing.

Moreover, while Chen Ran was dealing the Cards just now, Li Annan had already picked up his own Liar-Slayer.

Chen Ran cast a disdainful glance at the Liar-Slayer in Li Annan's hand and asked casually, "What do you want to ask?"

"You are the only gambler left. No one is drawing your Cards, and you have no Cards to draw. Why did the Scales of Judgment instantly tilt all the way down?"

Chen Ran's laughter echoed throughout the Secret Room, a sound that made Li Annan's blood run cold.

"I am a man who loves chess, and I deeply enjoy the feeling of pushing someone into a corner step by step. Think back carefully, what did I just ask you?"

Li Annan blanked for a moment.

'Chen Ran just asked a lot of questions.'

'Wait!'

'How to counter a Ghost Whisperer?'

Without waiting for him to answer, Chen Ran pointed to the second and third rules on the table's notice.

'Rule Two: Starting from the first gambler and moving clockwise, each person will sequentially draw one Card from the hand of the next gambler.'

'Rule Three: When the first gambler finishes drawing a Card again, the Scales of Judgment will perform a Settlement; when the Scales of Judgment completely tilt, the one with the highest score obtains the corresponding item, namely the Gun or Handcuffs.'

"The notice states, 'when the first gambler finishes drawing a Card again,' but I am the only one left at the table. I cannot draw a Card, nor can anyone draw from me. The facts contradict the rules on the notice. Therefore..."

"I deny the second rule, and I also deny the first half of the third rule."

"With those two rules denied, the Scales of Judgment perform infinite Settlements. Since only my Cards are on the table, naturally, I win infinitely!"

"That is exactly what you just answered for me: the method to counter a Ghost Whisperer!"

Li Annan's expression was quite spectacular. Recalling everything that just happened, it seemed Chen Ran had been setting up this exact move from the very beginning.

'He noticed right from the start that there was something fishy about the notice on the gambling table.'

'Then, he used his questions about the rules of Hell to slip in his own agenda, guiding me to mention the Ghost Whisperer. Perhaps the moment I said those words, he was already certain that I was the Ghost Whisperer!'

'I hid it so perfectly, yet he discovered it so effortlessly!!!'

"Were you not afraid that the Ghost Whisperer was just a lie I fabricated?" Li Annan asked, unwilling to concede.

"You are just unlucky. In the Novice Tutorial Room Instance, I ran into a few guys playing cheap tricks. They wrote 'Ghost Gate Pass' on the table's Shielding Plate to deceive people. Because of that, my first reaction upon seeing the notice on the gambling table was that there was a problem with the rules!"

"So, I guided you into stating the method to counter a Ghost Whisperer. I could then reverse-engineer your explanation based on the situations I encountered in the Novice Tutorial Room Instance, proving that your answer about how to counter a Ghost Whisperer was the truth."

Li Annan was speechless. "..."

Still reluctant to accept defeat, he asked, "What if I had lied when answering you earlier?"

"Kill you," Chen Ran said concisely.

Li Annan was left speechless once more. "..."

"Wait, you just said that as long as I admitted my identity, you would not use the Gun on the Scales of Judgment or the Liar-Slayer to kill me!"

Chen Ran gave him a weird look. "Did my words confuse you? That was a Future Lie. I will only be judged as lying after I kill you. But then again, once you are dead and I am the only one left in the Secret Room, who is going to hit me with a Judgment?"

Li Annan's face turned ashen. He felt as if Chen Ran had hypnotized him.

'Let me get this straight.'

'He saw through the trick in the notice.'

'At the same time, he figured out my guaranteed method to win when only two people were left at the table.'

'Therefore, after Cheng Si died, if he wanted to clear the Instance perfectly, he had to kick me out of the game.'

'So, he began asking questions, slipping in his own motives, successfully extracting the method to counter a Ghost Whisperer and invalidating the rules posted on the table.'

'Everything after that was just a performance.'

'He deliberately pretended to retrieve the Liar-Slayer to force me to admit I was the Sheep, thus eliminating me.'

'At that point, his plan was complete!'

'Without even realizing it, Chen Ran cornered me step by step.'

'Of course, during this time, he also gave me a bunch of utterly useless promises.'

'One: When only the Husband and the Sheep are left, the Husband will not use the Liar-Slayer to execute the Sheep with a Judgment.'

'Two: If you admit your identity, I will not use the Gun on the Scales of Judgment or the Liar-Slayer to kill you, and I will even play a life-and-death game with you.'

'These... were all Future Lies. Only after I am dead will he be judged as having lied. And by then, even if he did lie, he will be the only one left in the Secret Room. No one will be around to hit him with a Judgment.'

'No wonder he asked if lies told within an Instance would follow a Player forever.'

Chen Ran gave him the time it takes to smoke a Cigarette to think it over.

Seeing that Li Annan seemed to have figured it out, Chen Ran finally revealed a look of disgust. "Do you know why I wanted to clear the Instance perfectly?"

"Abducting the Child, murdering the Child, burning fifteen parents alive... Out of eight original families, only one Husband is left alive. He does not just want revenge for his ex-wife and Child, but for those seven other families as well. You must die by the Husband's hand!"

"I gave you so much time to think just so you could taste despair. People like you deserve an Ultimate Death!"

Li Annan glared venomously at Chen Ran and suddenly burst into laughter. "Hahaha! We are all the same, so stop pretending to be a saint! Good people do not end up in Hell. The evil you committed in life might be even greater and heavier than mine. What gives you the right to act like you are on the moral high ground to hit me with a Judgment?"

Chen Ran smiled without a word. He merely walked slowly toward him, the Gun's muzzle getting closer and closer. The fear in Li Annan's eyes was perfectly clear.

The muzzle pressed against Li Annan's forehead.

Suddenly, Chen Ran spoke. "I lied earlier. Why did you not hit me with a Judgment?"

Li Annan's despairing heart began to churn wildly. Regardless of whether Chen Ran's statement was true or false, just by saying it, he was definitely lying.

Bang!

Right when Li Annan felt a glimmer of hope, the Gun pressed against his forehead fired a Bullet.

As Li Annan's consciousness gradually blurred, he knew he had been played. Filled with endless reluctance and burning resentment, he struggled to raise his right hand...

And gave him the middle finger.