The Game

Gao Tian stood on an empty path in the park, holding the urn and pondering for a long time.

So the question was, should he play this game?

It seemed Gao Tian had little choice.

At first, he had been frantically hunted by a ghost, and the driver had looked at him like a man about to die before driving away. Now, at last, he had a way to fight back and could exert a little control over his own fate. That was already a huge improvement.

Even if the hope was so faint it could barely be noticed, he still had to seize it. He couldn't just stand there like an idiot, waiting for the Vengeful Ghost to come after him.

Besides, although the game in the urn was a mystery, the reward was undeniably immense. If he succeeded, not only could he escape death, he could even seal the Red-eyed Person inside and learn his Killing Rule in turn.

Talk about turning the tables.

According to the instructions, the best results would come if the holder brought the urn back to the scene where the Vengeful Ghost had first begun hunting him, right?

Gao Tian had opened the Black Packet in his apartment on the Third Floor of Pingshui Apartment, then been spotted and hunted by the Red-eyed Person, which had appeared out of nowhere in an alley. So the best strategy now was to return to Pingshui Apartment, to his room on the Third Floor. The starting point of it all.

Since the Red-eyed Person wasn't coming to find him, he would go find it.

As Gao Tian walked along the path in the park, he had initially thought about making preparations before going back. But on second thought, there was no point. The game set up by the urn was completely random. How was he supposed to prepare for that?

Gao Tian didn't know how long he had walked on his way home. His legs felt as if they were filled with lead.

In the dead of night, the security guards had vanished from the Guard Booth at the entrance to Pingshui Apartment. He had no idea where they had gone. Back at Building 3, where he lived, someone had hastily strung up police tape across the entrance—a blockade in name only.

It was probably just as the taxi driver had said. There had been so many Supernatural Events lately that even the police couldn't handle them anymore.

Society had already fallen into a state of semi-collapse. Terrifying things happened around people every day. The normal life Gao Tian had once believed in had disappeared without him even realizing it.

That night, he finally saw the true face of this world.

Gao Tian casually tore down the police tape and walked into the stairwell.

The motion-activated light picked up his footsteps and buzzed. It flickered on and off, no longer bright enough to illuminate the stairwell as it usually did.

His steps landed heavily on the stairs.

He didn't try to conceal his footsteps the way he had when fleeing Pingshui Apartment. Quite the opposite: Gao Tian was waiting for the Ghost to come for him. He deliberately revealed his whereabouts to lure it out.

Whatever happened, he would settle everything once and for all tonight.

In the dark corridor, Gao Tian seemed to step in something sticky. Black liquid seeped from beneath the doors of the neighboring apartments, spreading across most of the hallway floor and giving off the stench of blood.

Some of the apartments he passed had their doors wide open at three or four in the morning, their pitch-black interiors laid bare. Not a sound came from inside.

Gao Tian paid no mind to all these eerie sights. He simply held the urn, expressionless, passed the Second Floor, and made his way up to the Third Floor.

He felt his coat pocket. In his haste to leave, he had forgotten his keys. He had thought there was a chance he might never return, but when he reached his apartment, he found that most of his book-thick security door had been ripped off by some terrifying force. It was completely warped and ruined.

What inhuman strength.

Leaving at once instead of taking on that thing with a baseball bat had been absolutely the right choice.

Gao Tian crouched down and squeezed through the gaping hole back into his apartment.

The interior had been wrecked beyond recognition. The bed, wardrobe, and table had all been tossed around, reduced to a heap of rubble. A thick smell of blood wafted from the kitchen, which was piled high with black debris. Flies buzzed overhead.

After crawling into his apartment and failing to find him, the Red-eyed Person had apparently gone on a rampage. It had burst into other apartments and carried out a retaliatory massacre. Then it had left Pingshui Apartment and kept chasing him all the way to the park.

Gao Tian didn't go to check the kitchen. Instead, he found a relatively open spot and sat down. He placed the urn in front of him and quietly waited for fate to arrive.

The thing didn't keep him waiting long.

A moment later, heavy footsteps came from the hallway outside. Their owner drew closer and closer, then stopped at Gao Tian's door and fell silent for a moment. Then Gao Tian heard the entire security door being forced open. The footsteps entered and continued toward the inner room.

It was here.

As the distance between them shrank, Gao Tian's muscles tensed again.

There was only a thin wall between him and the Ghost. To be honest, at that moment, Gao Tian began to regret his decision. He started wondering if coming back on his own had really been wise. Maybe it would have been better to stay in the park, where the Vengeful Ghost had already stopped hunting him.

After all, Ghosts were far too powerful compared to humans. Once it found him, all it had to do was kill him on the spot. It didn't need to sit down and play some damn game with him.

Now, all he could do was put his faith in the urn and hope it really had the effect promised in the instructions.

With a swish, the wooden door was kicked apart by the person outside as if it were a sheet of paper.

The figure standing in the doorway had eyes as red as blood, glowing ominously in the darkness. It walked in one step at a time.

The two Gao Tians met.

Gao Tian saw that the Ghost had almost perfectly copied his face, except its skin was still as pale as a corpse's and its eyes were murky and scarlet. The only other thing it lacked was its right eye. With that one eye, it would be exactly like him.

After meeting Gao Tian, "Gao Tian" didn't immediately attack. It simply stood in the doorway. The two Gao Tians watched each other.

Then the urn in front of Gao Tian slowly opened on its own, though no one had touched it. Countless gray-white specks at the bottom of the urn poured out like a waterfall come to life, scattering through the dark room and air as they danced in the gloom.

At the same time, strange rules took shape in the minds of both Gao Tian and "Gao Tian":

"Congratulations! You've drawn the easiest game: Rock Paper Scissors!

"The rules are simple: rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, and paper beats rock. You'll play a best-of-three match. The first player to win two rounds wins the game.

"If a round ends in a tie, it is void, and you move on to the next round.

"The rules have now been fully explained. Please begin as soon as possible.

"If no winner has been decided after ten minutes, both players, whether human or Ghost, will be declared losers and imprisoned inside the urn."

The game they had drawn was Rock Paper Scissors, a game even little kids knew how to play.

There was almost no strategy to the game. Ninety-nine percent of the time, victory came down to luck.

As Gao Tian listened to the rules, he noticed that the "Gao Tian" opposite him remained expressionless and perfectly still. It was clearly listening just as intently to the urn's rules.

There was no doubt about it: the urn really worked. Gao Tian didn't know how it had managed it, but even a Ghost this powerful had to obey the rules set by the Supernatural Item. It couldn't overstep them by so much as a hair.

Knowing that eased Gao Tian's mind a little. Even if the game came down entirely to luck, at least he had a chance to win. That was better than the first time he had encountered the Red-eyed Person, when it had chased him down half a street like a stray dog and killed him by the roadside just like one.

Before the game began, Gao Tian looked up at his opponent, trying to talk to it.

After all, a chance to come face-to-face with a Ghost didn't come easily. It might even be the only chance he ever got.

He was so tense that he ended up relaxing completely. If he was going to die, he might as well not spend his last moments wearing a face like a bitter melon.

Gao Tian:

"Hey, even if you're a Ghost, you must have been alive once.

"Do you still remember what it was like to be human? What does it feel like to become a Ghost?

"I've always wondered: Vengeful Ghosts like you are full of hatred and keep hunting the Living. Is that really so much fun?

"And why do you have to turn into my double? What will happen once your face is exactly like mine?"

The red pupils filling "Gao Tian's" face stared at him, murky and devoid of emotion. Its sharply cut lips made no sound.

It seemed this Evil Spirit refused to talk to him.

If the urn weren't restraining it, it probably wouldn't have bothered standing in the doorway. It would have come straight in and torn him to pieces.

Since the Vengeful Ghost was the quiet type and didn't like to chat, Gao Tian didn't press it.

The first round of the best-of-three game of Rock Paper Scissors began.

The human and the Ghost swung their arms at the same time. Before their hands dropped into view, Gao Tian's mind raced.

It wasn't entirely true that Rock Paper Scissors was a game of pure luck. There was a little room for strategy and counterstrategy, enough to slightly improve one's odds.

For example, statistics showed that ordinary people were most likely to throw "rock" in the first round, with a probability of 37.5 percent.

Rock meant clenching one's hand into a fist. A fist gave people a sense of strength and control, and using it to launch a probing attack and smash through an opponent's defenses suited the psychology of most people.

If his opponent threw rock in the first round, Gao Tian should choose paper to counter it and secure the first victory.

But what if he was on the Second Floor, while the Ghost was on the Third Floor? What if the Ghost had thought of everything he had and "Gao Tian" had anticipated him, choosing scissors to counter his paper? What then?