Chapter 370: You closed it, so I'll open it then

"You're cheating!"

"Explain the cheating principle…."

The outcome of the fourth round of the gamble settled.

You Ai suppressed its fury, gripping the card in its palm so tightly that the patterns on it were scorched by its energy body, which was gradually heating up.

Again, like this.

Before the game had even officially begun, the opponent had already known in advance which part of the rules' efficacy it had modified, and won by way of "explaining the cheating principle."

This made You Ai's mentality blow up completely.

It stood up, staring fixedly at Brother Ming Hou, its crystalline, brilliant eyes churning with rage.

It absolutely refused to believe the opponent could see through the rule logic of the "Game Space."

The rules formed their own system; let alone a mortal creature like the opponent, even those who styled themselves gods would find it no easy task to see through them.

The opponent must have used some kind of ability similar to "mind-reading."

At the instant it formed a thought, the opponent had foreseen its motive in advance, rather than finding the answer from the rule logic operating within the Game Space after it input the thought.

But even so, the opponent's behavior still made it incomparably furious.

Since birth, it had never encountered such a difficult opponent.

You Ai's voice, carrying a chill, sounded in Brother Ming Hou's mind through spiritual communication.

"What despicable trick did you actually use?"

Facing the inquiry, Brother Ming Hou leaned lazily against the back of the chair, looking calmly at the furious You Ai, a hint of mockery surfacing in his silver pupils:

"Despicable? You sure know how to talk. So cheating and still thinking you're in the right, huh? Hurry up with the next round."

Upon hearing this, You Ai slowly sat down, still burning with anger.

The game had already begun; right now it could do nothing to the opponent. Killing a participant early to end the game would bring backlash from the Game Space.

With a wave of its hand, it dispersed the cards on the gambling table, then presented the prize.

Brother Ming Hou tucked it into his spatial pouch without hesitation.

Looking at the opponent's gaze as if it wanted to devour him, Brother Ming Hou felt he had never been this exhilarated in his entire life.

This was the confidence that came with being a player.

The right to try infinitely without consequence, the capital to break the limits of rules, the ability to tear apart every established framework in the most brazen way.

So what if you have rule enhancements? So what if you're a Ban Shen Jing powerhouse?

I curse when I want to curse, I throw my attitude when I want to throw it; no one is going to pin me down with rules.

With a high-dimensional god backing me, I can resurrect after death and start over after losing.

This infinite margin for error is the most arrogant capital a player has.

This was also a joy he had never experienced in his "previous life."

In the past, as a Ban Shen Jing, walking the world gave him a bit more confidence than ordinary creatures, yet he still lived under the shackles of survival.

A single misstep in decision-making could plunge him into an abyss of death from which there was no return.

But now he was a player, having completely bid farewell to those days of walking on thin ice.

He could charge ahead recklessly, and with the abilities granted by his faction—Guide Brother, Painful Painful Minghun, and the like—he could easily shatter the "inevitabilities" in the eyes of the You Lu Council members.

This joy burned hotter than winning ten rounds of Fate Gambit.

Watching You Ai's aggrieved appearance, Brother Ming Hou laughed heartily inside.

Sweet, so sweet!

The joy of cheating, the joy of breaking rules, the joy of being a player.

All of these added together were simply a thousand, ten thousand times more intoxicating than the future he had fantasized about as a child.

The boldest fantasies of his youth still carried the limitations imposed by his environment.

But the wantonness gained after becoming a player now was the true wildness that had broken free of all shackles.

This joy was like a long-overdue downpour, washing clean every day of his rule-bound past.

It was a thrill that, even after fantasizing a thousand, ten thousand times over the partial map of Monster World sketched out by the Fate Clan in his youth, he could never have imagined.

He felt that even a newbie just starting the game would feel more exhilarated and freer than a Ban Shen Jing ever had.

"Still dawdling?" A sinister wind circled Brother Ming Hou; his eyes reflected You Ai's posture of suppressed fury, and he found it laughable.

"Dragging things out won't solve the problem. Hurry up and start the next round?"

These words were like a sharp knife stabbing into You Ai's most fragile pride; it suddenly raised its head, glaring viciously at Brother Ming Hou.

Then it raised its hand and pressed down, and immediately a scroll appeared on the gambling table.

Light and shadow suddenly flowed, and a three-dimensional sandbox map emerged from the scroll.

Bluish-gray mountains lay across the center like a resting dragon, the summit of the main peak capped with gleaming white snow, pale-blue rivers winding around its base, the water snaking through gorges and pooling into a shimmering lake on the plain.

Scattered around the lake like stars were villages, with wisps of cooking smoke rising slowly in the form of energy light, even the crops in the fields clearly visible.

Wheat fields outlined in golden patterns swayed with the energy flow of the sandbox.

Purple mist rose at the edges of the map, with writhing shadows faintly visible within.

At the two ends of the sandbox, a stone platform hovered before Brother Ming Hou and You Ai respectively, with a stack of cards on the left side.

You Ai's icy voice rang out at this moment:

"This round, we each rely on our own ability."

As You Ai's words fell, the specific information for this round of the game immediately surfaced in Brother Ming Hou's mind.

The gameplay had become more complex compared to the previous mode.

It was mainly conducted in the form of a simulated war; each round both sides could draw five cards from the deck.

The card types were divided into: combat units (1–10 stars), natural disasters, engineering structures, event cards, trap cards, etc., totaling 28 card types.

Each round, both sides have 1000 action points, and using any card consumes action points.

Among them, natural disaster type cards can only be used once per round.

Their effect is to alter the natural terrain, or to deal damage that ignores friend and foe alike in a localized area.

For example, the disaster Flood can wash away bridges, Sandstorm will obscure vision, and Meteor can directly destroy everything within its area of coverage.

Next, the map contains a large number of resource nodes that can be used to upgrade unit types, raise the level of engineering structures, and unlock technology—for instance, spending 10000 resource points can upgrade a tech to draw one extra card per round.

Each resource node is guarded by wild monsters, requiring both sides to reasonably deploy unit types to capture them.

The specific gameplay is: after drawing cards, both sides must decide within this round which unit types to place in the map's empty zones. Placement must avoid the opponent's already-occupied resource nodes and the areas of functional structures. If one's unit type is adjacent to the enemy's unit type, combat will automatically trigger next round, and the side with the higher combined troop value wins.

The loser's unit type cards are discarded outright, while the winner's unit types suffer a certain degree of damage, but can be restored through functional structures.

The rules for capturing resource nodes are also quite clear: simply place one's unit types near the resource node. If there are no wild monsters in that area, or no enemy unit types garrisoned there, the corresponding resources can be harvested at the end of the round.

The victory condition is to lead one's army of unit types and take down the opponent's camp crystal.

After understanding the game settings, Brother Ming Hou asked the Guide what cheating principle You Ai had used in this round of the contest.

But the answer he received was that You Ai had not cheated at all this round.

Realizing that You Ai had completely given up on winning by cheating, Brother Ming Hou was utterly calm.

He decisively activated the brain overclock trait of the fifth star meridian slot.

Instantly, the war sandbox slowed dramatically in his eyes.

The flowing energy trajectories above became clearly visible; every wisp of light and shadow, every map node of information, seemed to be disassembled into countless data points piecing themselves together in his mind.

His senses could keenly capture the frequency of energy fluctuations on You Ai's body, and even infer You Ai's current mood through changes in that frequency.

His thinking and logic ability rapidly improved, but the price was a frenzied drain of spiritual power every second.

But at this moment, Brother Ming Hou did not care.

You closed yours, so I'm opening mine.

The game began, and five cards automatically surfaced in both sides' card piles, displayed face-down to the opponent.

Brother Ming Hou activated the Hawk-Headed Demon trait at this moment.

Instantly, the five cards You Ai had turned away from him appeared in his mind.

They were: Shadow Thrust (3-star unit card), Fetid Swamp Trap (natural disaster card), Siege Hammer (6-star unit card), Arrow Tower (1-star functional structure card), and Etherealize (mass buff card).

Paired with Jie Xi Gong scanning, he could clearly know the specific function of each card.

The match began here.

This was destined to be an unfair match.

You Ai had given up cheating, but Brother Ming Hou chose to respond to this round's challenge by cheating.

With the Hawk-Headed Demon and Jie Xi Gong providing assistance, You Ai's cards were open the entire game, every move clearly visible to Brother Ming Hou.

As the match progressed, the resource nodes on the map were continuously captured by Brother Ming Hou.

After the next draw ended, You Ai's energy-formed fingers hovered above the cards, hesitating so badly it could not even decide how to proceed.

The carefully constructed tactics, under Brother Ming Hou's near-prescient suppression, could not pose any threat at all.

Every time it tried to maneuver its troops, the enemy's spearhead had already cut off its advance route in advance, or even set up an ambush waiting ahead of time.

When it tried to unleash a natural disaster to turn the tide, the unit types in Brother Ming Hou's hand had already anticipated it and quickly withdrawn.

When it tried to launch a sneak attack with an "event card," engineering structure cards had long since built defenses at the key positions it had locked onto, causing its sneak attack to instead cost it a large amount of troop strength.

The situation on the sandbox, in You Ai's eyes, was like a great net slowly tightening.

Every struggle it made only made the encirclement Brother Ming Hou had laid down tighter.

The resource points on the war sandbox were nibbled away bit by bit each round, while Brother Ming Hou's advance pushed steadily forward like a tide, finding no opening and giving it no chance to counterattack.

Every method had been tried, and none worked at all.

This sent a chill rising in You Ai's heart.

It also confirmed its earlier guess.

The opponent possessed a mind-reading-like ability that could know its inner thoughts.

That was why the pace of the war was controlled so transparently by the opponent.

For example, when it prepared to fight to the death, the opponent's unit types suddenly retreated, and every arrangement was baiting it into wasting precious action points.

This was not a match at all, but a one-sided suppression.

The energy fluctuations radiating from You Ai's body grew violent during this period; it had never experienced such a suffocating sense of oppression in a strategic contest.

Every one of its intentions was known in advance, and the opponent seemed to stand on a higher dimension, easily adjudicating every step of its layout.

The sandbox's light and shadow reflected on its blurred face, and You Ai could not bring itself to take the next step for a long time.

The countdown ended at this moment.

Under the intense sense of defeat, You Ai wasted an entire round of setup.

Brother Ming Hou, however, still calmly played card after card, and after exhausting his action points, smiled and looked toward it, then shifted his gaze to the camp crystal floating before it.

At this moment, You Ai's mentality completely collapsed.

It knew it had already lost this game; further struggle would be futile.

Most of the resource production points on the map had already been captured by the opponent. At this stage, the opponent only needed the resources it had gained to easily steamroll and win.

Continuing held no meaning anymore.

"Don't give up. What if you win?"

Brother Ming Hou encouraged at this moment.

Facing Brother Ming Hou's provocation, fury rose in You Ai's heart, but it had nowhere to vent.

And Brother Ming Hou's army of unit types had already advanced near the camp crystal; the end of this round basically declared its defeat.

A new round began.

Facing You Ai's posture of near surrender, Brother Ming Hou suddenly smiled, reaching out to lightly glide his fingertip across the deck of cards.

When the next round of card drawing ended, a large-scale disaster card, Meteor Fall, lay conspicuously among the five cards before him.

But what made You Ai incredulous was that Brother Ming Hou voluntarily showed this card to it, then casually tossed it into the discard pile.

You Ai's gaze suddenly narrowed.

Ignoring its surprise, Brother Ming Hou calmly played a one-star "Scout," placing it on the wasteland far from resource points.

That location was nowhere near a village or a town; it could neither guard a key pass nor seize resources, a foolish move purely wasting action points.

Immediately after, Brother Ming Hou used his remaining action points to play a "Furious Hurricane" disaster card; this card was meant to clear enemy disaster cards, yet he insisted on covering the iron ore resource point he had just occupied, effectively cutting off his own troops' supply lines.

The situation on the sand table suddenly showed a flaw.

You Ai stared at the iron ore shrouded by the hurricane, then looked at the lone scout on the wasteland; the frustration churning in its chest was replaced by confusion.

"Your turn."

In You Ai's eyes, Brother Ming Hou's behavior was undoubtedly naked humiliation.

Yet it still suppressed its anger and began to deploy according to the game rules.

As the game progressed, situations beyond You Ai's expectations continued.

In the new round, Brother Ming Hou deliberately skipped the optimal solution during the card-drawing phase; instead of using the "Technological Breakthrough" that could upgrade troop types, he played a useless card, "Nomad Migration," causing two legions at the map's edge to vanish into thin air, needlessly losing two potential resource points.

The subsequent series of actions were all self-mutilation.

Handing over a great advantage.

Watching Brother Ming Hou continuously "commit" elementary mistakes, watching its own encroached resource points gradually recovered, watching the opponent's front line retreat due to broken supplies; the originally impenetrable encirclement revealed gaps through the opponent's deliberate concession.

When it finally mustered the courage to mobilize its remaining forces to charge at Brother Ming Hou's camp crystal, the anticipated interception did not appear.

This made You Ai realize the opponent seemed to want to give it a chance to start over.

And then humiliate it thoroughly with another victory.

But You Ai did not let such an opportunity slip away.

Only the process did not go as it expected; when the situation turned evenly matched, Brother Ming Hou continued to hold back, constantly yielding resource territories.

Until the battering ram it played slammed heavily onto the camp crystal before Brother Ming Hou, accompanied by a crisp cracking sound, ending the game.

"Not easy; you finally won a round," Brother Ming Hou grinned, the mockery in his eyes completely unmasked.

You Ai froze in place, watching the camp crystal dissolve into flowing light, yet felt no shred of joy brought by victory in its heart.

The opponent could have easily won this round of the game, yet like teasing prey, step by step pushed the victory right in front of itself.