Doubt? Believe?

Game: Liar's Tavern:

"Do you choose to doubt or believe?"

"I doubt!"

At the card table, Tao Yuan gathered the cards in her hand and frowned slightly. Looking at the person seated next to play, she said in a tone full of warning, "Are you sure? I didn't lie to you. All the cards I played this round were the main card."

Her fingertips rested on two playing cards. Though her face was full of confidence, her two fingers curled slightly in apparent nervousness as they tapped the cards, making an agitated clicking sound.

Tao Yuan said, "There are only two chances out of six left with this gun. If you insist on doubting me and fail, you'll very likely die."

The man swallowed, his throat bobbing as he stared at her two tapping fingers. For a moment, he didn't know what to say.

Although Bai Yang had given all the playing cards to Tao Yuan and killed the hosts, he had suddenly disappeared a few minutes ago. The dead hosts had come back to life and swiftly started a new game.

The uncanny beings had forcibly taken all the cards in Tao Yuan's hand, making everyone breathe a sigh of relief as they looked at her with gloating satisfaction. Tao Yuan, however, showed no discontent. She had long known this would happen.

Bai Yang had something important to do. Though he loved putting on an act, he wasn't one to keep things to himself, and he had already discussed a plan with Tao Yuan before leaving.

He had something important to do, and Tao Yuan couldn't hold him back. She had her own pride, too.

Bai Yang had gone out with Moonlit Night's help, while she stayed behind. Besides ensuring her own victory, she had to do her best to stall for time and try to save more people.

There were wins and losses at the table, but no one ever managed to beat Tao Yuan. Her acting and verbal tactics were second to none, sometimes truthful and sometimes deceptive, impossible to read.

Whenever she pressed her fingertips down on two cards, no one could tell whether she was telling the truth. Even with a mind-reading uncanny object, they still couldn't see what she was thinking.

She always wore a polite smile as she sat upright at the table, her presence in full force. It was as though this were her stage, not a bloody game room.

Was Tao Yuan afraid of failing? Of course she was, but stronger than her fear was her confidence in her own mind.

Though she had never played this card game before, that didn't stop her from confidently playing her cards, taking cards, and pushing the pistol toward the loser every time.

"I dou... believe." In the end, the man couldn't stick to his choice. She studied Tao Yuan's composed expression and concluded that her deliberate tapping was a flaw she had intentionally shown! It was all to make him doubt her and get him killed.

Doubting meant pulling the trigger, and pulling the trigger could mean death. Believing didn't.

"Guest No. 15, please confirm your answer."

"I believe!"

Tao Yuan watched the two cards vanish from beneath her fingertips, smiling broadly. "Good. Would you like to pull the trigger to verify it?"

"...No, I'll play a card."

The man laid down a card, but before he could speak, Tao Yuan's face suddenly went cold. Her dark eyes fixed on the cards in his hand, and she said, word by word, "I doubt."

"What..." The man was caught completely off guard. "I haven't even said..."

"Doubt successful!" The host's voice cut him off.

The card beneath the man's fingertips turned over on its own. It was an ace, not the main card, a queen.

He had lost.

Tao Yuan's doubt had succeeded.

Tao Yuan picked up the gun, weighed it in her hand, then handed it to the man. "Go on."

"May Lady Luck be on your side. The first four shots didn't hit, and this one won't either."

Game room: High Card

"Why are you telling me this?"

The woman gave a derisive laugh. "Don't tell me you haven't figured it out. We've made it this far; hardly anyone still alive is slow-witted. Don't waste time."

An Ying met the woman's gaze. After a while, he said, "I have an uncanny object that can temporarily suppress the rules, but it won't last long."

The woman said firmly, "We have to take a chance. These damn rules were never meant to let us clear the game."

She had originally thought she would see whether the game ended after the third round, or whether there was another victory condition. But now the fourth round had begun, which meant this damn game had never intended to let them leave.

It was a game they were bound to lose. Even if you got four aces, you would still die at the end of the fourth round.

First, the rules stated that each person could only possess four playing cards. Whether used or unused, they could only possess four.

Once the fourth round began, the loser would lose their last card and die because they had no card left to play.

But the winner couldn't escape death either. If she chose to take the loser's card, she would then possess more than four cards, breaking the rules and losing her life.

If she chose not to take it, she would also die because she had no card with which to play.

There was something wrong with these rules.

The rules of uncanny instances could be true or false. If the rules were [contaminated], two rules would often contradict each other, and they could then tell which rule was false.

But this time, the game room's rules had not been contaminated, and their minds were perfectly clear, which meant there was nothing wrong with those two rules. This game was plainly telling them outright: they couldn't survive.

Sending out the corpse of the final victor was also a way of clearing it, and it had never been specified whether that meant clearing Game Room No. 2 or the entire uncanny instance.

Final winner? This wasn't a card game. It was a scam.

Clearly realizing this, An Ying finally understood why he had felt that something was wrong all along.

He was a little annoyed with himself for only noticing now. If Qin Rang and Tao Yuan had been here instead, would it have taken them this long to "finally understand"?

An Ying said, "Host, pause the game. There seems to be a problem with your game rules."

Those words seemed to flip a switch. The lively, jubilant atmosphere turned cold, and the bright lights around them were suddenly veiled in a faint, mistlike shadow.

The NPCs' movements abruptly froze, stuttering like rusty machine parts. On the stage, the host's originally handsome human face suddenly stretched into an eerie curve, its flesh pulling outward as an icy, rotting stench spread through the air.

An Ying held his breath. The smell was like burnt, rotting meat that had been left for many years, thick with the odor of mold.

"Guest, do you think there's a problem with our rules?" The host stiffly twisted its neck. There was a hole in its chin that went straight through to the top of its skull. Its head must have been pierced by some kind of firearm before it died, causing air to leak as it spoke.

If they had only been testing the waters just now, they could now be certain that directly pointing out an error in the rules to it was a path to death.

"You've misunderstood. We just think that, after playing this long, the game has become too uninteresting."

"Dull, tedious, unoriginal, and no fun at all." The woman played the good cop. "And your work isn't up to standard, either. The cards have almost all been played, and we still haven't seen a single two or either joker. Did the staff leave a few cards out?"

"Someone who works like that should be fired."