Survivorship Bias

Start Override

A red laser beam moved to the forehead of the man beside him. With a thud, the semi-viscous blood plasma mixture splattered onto his wrist.

That was the scene in front of him when he awakened. It was as terrible as a nightmare.

Blank-headed, he sat on a chair and stared at the man whose head was blown off and had fallen to the ground. The man’s eyes, like his own, were wide open.

“This is what happens when you try to force your way out of [Altar].”

Along with the noise in his brain that resembled an out-of-tune signal, he heard an entirely pure and clear voice similar to a church choir.

He discovered his reaction was abnormally slow, and it took a lot of energy to shift his gaze to his wrist.

The wrist was seriously injured, the flesh was everted, and the mechanical bones and hydraulic joints inside were exposed. With a metallic luster, the blood of the man who died thirty seconds ago slowly flowed along the arc of his wrist towards the silvery bones.

His hands were shaking, and he was unable to stop them.

He raised his hand and rubbed it on the hem of his clothes, trying to wipe off the other person’s blood, but he didn’t feel the pain of the wound rubbing against his clothes. An abundance of blood seemed to have stained the black shirt, but he couldn’t see it clearly.

Looking around, he saw several unknown people. Facing the person who died in front of them, everyone’s expressions were different. Plain fear was on some faces, while others only contained numbness.

When he cast his eyes, several looked away as if they were afraid to meet him in the eye.

He wanted to see these faces more clearly, but his vision seemed to be immersed in water, and his eyes were sore. The next second, tears rolled down without warning. He raised his hands to dry them in confusion.

The voice appeared again.

“Congratulations to the survivors for entering this game round. Let us settle the results of the previous game first.”

“Perhaps you’ll be acquainted with a new round of friends.”

As soon as they spoke, he heard a subtle “drip–” sound within the white noise in his brain. Then, a virtual holographic panel emerged in his left field of vision, which appeared to display information about himself:

[Variable Name: An Wujiu

Attribute: Male, 20 years old

Game Rounds: 5

…

Win Rate: 100/100

Danger Rank: SSS]

An Wujiu.

Seeing the name, a large amount of information poured into his brain instantly, like an overload of data. The appearance and malformed workings of the world, memories from birth to adulthood, every passing face in the street, the chaotic red-light district, artificial blue skies, and endless acid rain.

The sheer volume of information made An Wujiu breathless, and a new projection panel appeared on his right side, showing that he had obtained 10,000 holy coins.

All the early impressions began to piece together some contours of what happened–he seemed to have entered a game where the winner would obtain the so-called holy coins during settlement. Lose the game…

Thinking of the man who just fell to the ground because he didn’t follow the rules, the result of losing was probably the same.

The five senses were genuine, and he could certainly feel the pain caused by the injury. Was this some new virtual reality game?

Shortly after, An Wujiu realized that his amnesia seemed less conventional and more like it had been artificially edited, with only part of it incomplete.

He remembered his time, a world where administrative organizations collapsed, national boundaries blurred, and nearly anyone could turn into merchandise. He even recalled the few people who stood at the top, those business giants who were big enough to trample the state machinery under their feet.

What about himself?

All the pictures in his memory were warm, genuine, and clear from the first perspective, with the same person in them. The beautiful and gentle woman hugged him as a child, put him to sleep, taught him to read and write, and smiled at him.

Frame by frame, she gradually aged, but the care she gave was the same. She softly called him An An, which was his nickname.

But everything ended in front of the hospital bed where she was dying, covered with transparent and slender tubes, the ventilator concealing the smile she tried to show.

She was his mother.

From infancy to adulthood, all the memories associated with it and the love he received flowed back into this body.

His mother from the bedside seemed to be trying to tell him something.

The image began shaking, and everything distorted.

""

She moved her lips, but the sharp noise in An Wujiu’s head completely masked the sounds she made.

Passively withdrawing from the memory fragment, An Wujiu was in constant pain. The blue veins on his neck bulged outward, and his temples were still faintly throbbing.

He wondered if his brain’s hippocampus had been damaged or if anything had been inserted. An Wujiu wanted to check if there was a neural interface on his body with a microprocessor tucked in, but the severely injured right hand was difficult to lift. Perhaps the still trembling hand had a broken bone.

With his left hand raised, he reached behind his ears and head, only to realize that his hair had grown to his waist, but he was oblivious to it.

He didn’t want his hands to keep shaking like this. An Wujiu bit the tip of his right finger, frowned, and glanced at the man wearing a mask.

The man was standing farthest away from him. He was tall, wore a black trench coat, and looked like a young man. He did not show his true face, wearing a mechanical mask made of synthetic material. The surface was as smooth and white as a kind of long-lost lovely white glaze, both glossy and spotlessly white with a warm luster. But the mask retained traces of spliced parts.

The front of the mask resembled Avalokitesvara1, with drooping gentle eyes, slightly raised corners of the mouth, and a red dot in the center of the eyebrows. The horizontally and vertically spliced coalescing lines and the metal buckles connecting behind the head gave the image of Avalokitesvara a subtle sense of fragmentation and machinery.

Ostensibly unable to touch the interface, An Wujiu put down his left hand.

He was puzzled by everything that had been going on here. He remembered every bit of being with his mother, growing up, his father dying early, him and his mother depending on each other, and a lovely younger sister.

At this time, he should be accompanying his mother in the ward. Why did he appear here?

“As before, we’ve prepared a warm-up game for you before the official battle begins. The survivor who wins the warm-up game can gain a game advantage or the right to choose a solo or team match.”

The white void in front of him began to flicker when the sound appeared, like a flashing color bar after a TV malfunction. Before them, a round table with eight high chairs appeared.

“Please take a seat.”

The rest of the group took their seats as instructed. An Wujiu didn’t want to get shot dead when he was still confused, so he sat down with the other people as required.

The moment he sat down, pulsating digital bars and afterimages with highly saturated colors appeared on the surrounding white background. After the flickering, they were placed on the rooftop of a skyscraper. Intermingling neon beams dazzled the dark and gloomy sky. The aircraft, the intertwining rails near the high-rise buildings, and the holographic projections of advertisements almost equivalent to the amount of pollution were dizzying.

An Wujiu felt that he also had impaired vision. He squinted slightly under the stimulating lights and could see a part of the enormous hologram thirty to forty meters high in his field of vision. It was a virtual huadan2 wearing headpieces with pearls and green jades.

They were at the top of the world, and all they could see were lights filled with bustling sounds. There were no gutters flowing with chemicals in the slums, piles of abandoned prosthetic limbs, nor disregarded rotten corpses in the corners.

Retracting their vision, the people on the round table looked at each other, each with ulterior moves. Compared with the outside world that drowned itself in debauchery, it was much simpler here–eight people and eight chairs, with display screens embedded on the table in front of each seat, nothing else.

At least it wasn’t a game that required force to determine the outcome.

An Wujiu thought about his injury and looked at the others.

The other seven people were of different ages. At first glance, they had nothing in common. From right to left, the seven were: a young woman wearing a cheongsam3, a robust man, a platinum-haired elderly man with a western face, a man wearing an Avalokitesvara mask, a skinny middle-aged man in a suit, a young man with freckles on his cheeks and black-rimmed glasses, and a red-haired boy who looked only fifteen or sixteen.

An Wujiu frowned.

Why was he the only one badly injured?

The noise in his head grew louder and louder, causing him a headache. He turned his face and looked left.

Sitting on his left was a boy who looked very small, with red fire-like hair. He wore a loosely-fitted, shabby baseball jacket and a black hat, appearing to be an amiable person. His eyes were large, staring at the old Rubik’s Cube that kept turning in his hands.

An Wujiu began to observe almost instinctively and saw that the boy’s two feet were on the edge of the chair, his whole body was curled upwards, his fingers were flexible, he had no thick calluses, and his arm muscles weren’t prominent. He shouldn’t be very good at fighting and using weapons.

An Wujiu stretched his left hand towards the boy. “Hello.”

He wanted to say, “Let’s get to know each other,” but as soon as he spoke, he found himself talking at a questionable rhythm as if he had a speech impediment.

The boy froze, still holding his Rubik’s cube in both hands. His fingers were still, like a bionic rabbit that tried to mimic eating but got jammed.

“What’s wrong?” An Wujiu asked softly. He didn’t think his attitude was scary, not to mention he hid his bloody right hand under the table.

The boy’s eyes showed defensiveness, and he didn’t answer, but An Wujiu saw him glance uneasily at the middle-aged man with glasses sitting diagonally across from him. The man at the end of his line of sight looked at least forty years old with sunken cheeks and eyes that were sharp.

“Asking what’s wrong?”

Before An Wujiu could say anything, the middle-aged man pushed the glasses on the bridge of his nose, holding his arms in both hands, a typical defensive gesture. “An Wujiu, you killed so many people ruthlessly, and now you pretend to be innocent. Do you think anyone will believe you?”

When he finished talking, the rest of the people at the table looked at An Wujiu. It was as if they were waiting for something.

“I don’t… remember,” An Wujiu answered truthfully. He spoke slowly, and his pause was not quite right.

In other people’s eyes, this long-haired man was born with outstanding skin, but his beauty gave no artificial feeling. His skin was as fair and clean as the moon over the city when there was no pollution, but his complexion was poor, and his lips were pale.

His eyes were pure and soft, slightly out of focus, and his fingers trembled slightly. He looked frightened but didn’t seem to be. The tremor was more like he had anxiety or some other mental disorder.

This look didn’t resemble the awful man from Yang Ming’s mouth, nor did it look like someone who could win in [Altar].

An Wujiu lowered his eyes in thought. Judging from the boy’s reaction, long before the man opened his mouth to say these words, the people here had already recognized that [An Wujiu was very dangerous].

Whether the man was telling the truth or not, this was not a good situation for him.

The middle-aged man sneered. “Pretending to have amnesia this time?” He set his hand on the table, raised his eyebrows, and gnashed his teeth. “Don’t take people for fools.”

“You’re undeniably a guy with an unchanging, rigid personality. It was the same before. With a pretty face, he pretended to be unaware of how pure and virtuous he was, and he won over other people to form an alliance. Anyone could take advantage of them by any means.”

Regarding this description, An Wujiu sensed a feeling of disconnection that did not belong to him and felt somewhat helpless.

But he noticed that the mechanical Avalokitesvara on the opposite side rested his chin on his hand and leaned forward as though interested in the person’s accusation against him. It seemed to be the first time he had seen this person move since he came in. Otherwise, he would have suspected the person was a machine.

The middle-aged man clenched his hands on the table into fists. “I met him in the last round, and the game was a bloody casino. An Wujiu vowed that he could save everyone’s life and let many people join his camp. However, in the end, he figured out the rules himself but didn’t tell anyone. He just watched the people who believed in him die one by one. Finally, he survived with all the casino tokens in their camp!”

There was a trembling between words in his voice as if from fear. He pointed at An Wujiu, filled with emotion. “If you don’t believe me, you can check the number of sacred coins from his last settlement. It must be ten times more than mine.”

After saying that, An Wujiu felt increasingly far from good.

“It turns out that your last round was so intense?”

These words came from An Wujiu’s right side.

He turned his head, and to his right sat a young woman in a pink cheongsam, with a snake-shaped necklace around her neck, a stunning face, and thick, beautiful curly black hair with a natural luster. She was a rarity in this day and age.

With a smile, she stared at the nail polish on her fingertips, looked at An Wujiu, and deliberately shook. “So scary. It seems that not all handsome guys can be trusted.”

An Wujiu had some thoughts because of her last sentence.

The battle was incredibly fierce, and it shouldn’t have been easy for the people who survived.

“In any case, the winner of this game cannot be An Wujiu. The rest of us must work together to exclude him first, or anyone could fall victim to him.”

He spoke loudly, and the others fell silent for a moment as if tacitly agreeing.

An Wujiu knew that whatever he’d say now would be useless.

Because it was a really compelling proposition. Although it was unclear what the game and the rules were, it was best to be able to mount a public target, lest the muzzle be aimed at any of them.

At this moment, the voice appeared again, “Since everyone has taken their seats, let’s get acquainted with each other’s names first.”

As soon as the voice fell, a blue light appeared in front of everyone. The light gradually transformed into characters, which were their respective names.

From An Wujiu’s point of view, his name was floating in the dense night, almost overlapping with the person’s name on the opposite side.

The clamor in his head paused for a moment.

[Shen Ti]

It was the mysterious man with the mechanical Avalokitesvara.

Hello readers! I was shocked to see such a good novel had no translation on NovelUpdates, so I decided to translate it. Currently still reading it, but I’m really enjoying the book. Update schedule probably won’t be consistent because I’m translating two novels and I have school, but I’m aiming for at least one chapter per week. The author is very knowledgeable, writes wonderful descriptions, and great at writing characters. Please leave a rating and review at NovelUpdates because the novel is much better than what the rating makes it seem like! Thank you and enjoy the novel (　＾∇＾)

Footnotes

A bodhisattva who represents the compassion of all Buddhas. He has multiple avatars but here’s one with a red dot.The role of a vivacious young woman in Chinese operaa Chinese dress worn by women