The penultimate day of the preseason and midseason.
Wang Shun took a pile of materials, took a deep breath and walked into the meeting room of the Wandering Circus. He looked straight at everyone who was sitting: "I believe you should be able to recite the information about our opponent this time. "
"Because they don't have any information for us to analyze." Wang Shun smiled bitterly, "Team Russell Cemetery, our opponent in the last match."
As he said, he clicked on the system panel:
"Russell's performance in the preseason is similar to the previous two years, giving up the singles and doubles and focusing on the team games. This is a good thing and a bad thing for a rookie team like us."
"The good thing is that you only have to play one game. The bad thing is that this game is the team game you are least good at."
Wang Shun clicked on the system panel, and the panel slid to the next page. There was a small video on it. After Wang Shun clicked to play, the video began to play. A misty gray mist was surging, and only a few people could be seen. Running inside, making a violent gasp.
Wang Shun paused, his expression heavy:
"This is not the first time I have shown this little video to you. This is a video of a game at Russell Cemetery. The video of almost all Russell games during the preseason is like this."
"It's a fog, I can't see anything clearly."
Bai Liu leaned back in his chair: "We have analyzed this. Russell Cemetery should be to further keep secret the skills of the players in the team. It has fixed a fog-covered skill player in the team to release the skills during the game. , To confuse the opponent’s vision while keeping his information secret in front of the audience."
Wang Shun sighed: "This method is very successful and cannot be reproduced. They do not need the support of the audience so they can do it. Because of this method throughout the preseason, we not only know the death toll at Russell Cemetery, but also affect other people. No information is known."
"Compared to the previous season, Russell Cemetery's death toll in the preseason this year has dropped significantly."
Wang Shun paused: "It shouldn't be described as a sharp drop. This year's pre-season, Russell Cemetery only two players died and successfully entered the pre-season finals."
"Before this step, I have never understood why Russell Cemetery, which ranked tenth last year, had to give up the qualification for this year's midseason and relegated to play the preseason. But at this point, in White Under the chairman's analysis, I realized that I had entered a misunderstanding of thinking."
Wang Shun shook his head and smiled helplessly: "I always thought that Russell Cemetery, which arbitrarily sacrificed the lives of members in exchange for victory, was a cruel, vain, and inhuman cold-blooded guild."
"Isn't it?" Mu Sicheng asked while holding his chin, "Last year this team sacrificed more than 80 newcomers."
Bai Liu drew out the pen that Mu Sicheng was turning: "It's not."
"On the contrary, this guild, as they advertise, is a sanctuary for desperate players, a warm and humane collective cemetery. Russell Cemetery is a typical closed community guild. The sense of mutual help that is like close to neighbors is united and friendly."
Question marks began to appear on Mu Sicheng's head: "The unity and friendship that pushes people out to die?"
"You should change your mind. When they join this guild, they already know that they will probably die. In other words, these people didn't join this guild because they wanted to live."
Bai Liu raised his eyes: "It's because I want to die, but I don't want to die so worthless."
"And Russell Cemetery is a place where their deaths can be maximized."
Mu Sicheng lay on the table, peeking at Bai Liu and confiscated his pen: "But even so, Russell Cemetery has nothing to do with Unity and Friendship, right?"
Bai Liu looked down at Mu Sicheng, and the topic suddenly changed: "What do you think is the greatest value of death?"
Mu Sicheng was startled, and then he sat upright and began to ponder hard: "Money? No, I won't be able to spend it after I die, name? It doesn't seem to make much sense for everyone to die..."
Finally, Mu Sicheng gave up and leaned back on the chair: "I don't understand what these people are thinking. When people die, there will be nothing. No matter what they get in exchange for death, they are of no value. Entering the game, you can earn points in the desperate game here, you can still get something, death is too uneconomical."
"That's you." Bai Liu said calmly, "A high-strength newcomer who is chasing by the big guild, Mu Sicheng, you are also top-level configuration in reality, with a good family background, first-class school, and you have a good value to yourself. A conclusive cognition, so it will not easily go to the zero option."
"You haven't been caught, have you?"
Mu Sicheng was startled: "What is the volume?"
"Inner scroll." Bai Liu said.
Mu Sicheng frowned: "Isn't that just for employment?"
"No, there will be internal scrolls where resources are monopolized." Bai Liu picked up a pen and wrote on a spread of white paper. "The points in the game can be earned by playing games, just like wages can be earned by work. , Then playing games is a way of working."
"But various guilds have appeared in the game. They have classified and contracted playing games in a more efficient way, improved the efficiency of playing games in exchange for points, and also provided various guarantees. It reduces your chances of losing your life because of the game, just like a variety of companies."
"Normal players will take the initiative to join these companies in order to earn points efficiently and to survive better."
"This is the first mechanism to be formed, and it is also a reasonable operating mechanism." Bai Liu wrote the words "original mode" on the paper. "Normally, this mechanism can continue to operate for a long time before it starts. Collapse, but at this time, there is a setting to accelerate the mechanism to collapse in this game."
Bai Liu slowly opened his eyelids: "That's gambling."
"The gambling in this game is a kind of anticipatory loan mechanism. This mechanism binds your beliefs, interests, and your life in the guild. This doubles the cost of your betting, even if a player knows he is big. The probability will be consumed by this guild. Because of the sinking psychology and cost of gamblers, and the difficulty of finding the next home, it is difficult for this player to get out of this guild. This forms the first element necessary for scrolling."
"—Bundled."
"The tighter the binding, the slower the flow of personnel between the guilds will become, and the slower it will become, and it will make everyone realize that the next home is getting harder and harder to find. Choosing a guild will become a lifelong choice. In the period of newcomers, everyone would crazily scroll in order to enter the Grand Guild, lower their treatment and so on."
"And once you get to this step, you will find a very magical fact." Bai Liu tapped the tip of the pen twice on the paper. "The efficiency of the guild's earning points has become higher, the speed of game rotation has become higher, and the gambling pool has become more efficient. There are more and more points in circulation, and the points in the entire game are exponentially increasing."
"But the treatment of new members in the guild is getting lower and lower, and no matter how many points the guild saves, in order to maintain their position in the ranking, they have to vote in the league in the end, and they haven't saved much."
"Where did all these points go? Who swallowed them?"
Bai Liu put the pen down and gently pushed it with his fingertips, and the pen rolled in front of the startled Mu Sicheng.
Mu Sicheng stretched out his hand to hold the pen pushed by Bai Liu. He felt a little chill in his back: "...in the gambling pool."
"Bingo." Bai Liu smiled, "Yes, the gambling pool mechanism uses five times the leverage probability to bet points every time. It seems to be a loss, but the points that everyone has taken from the gambling pool are connected to their own earning. Yes, I finally returned to the gambling pool, and then was swallowed up by the 5 to 15% handling fee each time in winning or losing."
"From the fact that the richest guild is the League of Gamblers, not the killer sequence, it can be seen that the gambling pool is the biggest banker in this game."
Bai Liu raised his eyes to look at the data on Wang Shun’s system panel: “Assuming that you are just an ordinary player in the game, with ordinary skills and panels. Although you can survive, you will not be involved in the big guild, and you will not be able to become a star player. ."
"You are trying hard to survive. In a certain league, you can't help betting all your savings on a certain team, and then you lose everything. In the middle of the collapse, you realize that it is difficult for you to get money from the gambling pool. ."
"But after each league, the points raised from the five-fold leverage in the gambling pool will increase the price of the props in the entire game. If you dare not participate in the gambling, the points in your hand will not increase, and the items you can buy will increase. The less, the more difficult it is to survive in the game."
"You don’t have any extra points in your hand to exchange for money to be used in reality. The game is not a place to release your desires, but it makes you more painful, because after you have been on the six-day shift in reality, After a day’s rest, I have to come to the game [Go to work] and earn points to buy items tremblingly, so that I can save points for buying a life-saving item before the next week’s game."
Mu Sicheng's eyes straightened: "...Thank you, I feel a little bit dying after substituting in."
Bai Liu continued: "Use the points in the game to redeem items to use in real life. It is a high-level player who has points in his hand, and some crazy players who just want to enjoy the present regardless of the game. The former players are a minority, and the latter. Under the catalysis of the gambling pool, players have become the players with the largest base, that is, gambler players. That's why the Gambler League can be that big."
Wang Shun nodded in agreement with Bai Liu's words: "But there are alliances of gamblers and non-gamblers. After Chairman Bai gave me an analysis, I specially investigated the average investment of a player's gambling pool at Russel Cemetery."
"The result surprised me." Wang Shun clicked on the panel, and a data analysis form popped up on the panel. "Their gambling pool investors do not exceed ten points per capita, which can be said to be a veritable alliance of non-gamblers."
"Gambling is a kind of stimulating future consumption. When this consumption desire decreases, it shows that they are very pessimistic about their future expectations."
Wang Shun sighed: "There is no way to get involved in the big guild. I dare not gamble. I have to go through the test of the once-a-week death game. Many people are also very tired in reality. They work hard every day without much money, and their lives are tight. It’s hard to get into the game, and the result is... ”
"They had a hard time."
It was so hard that even his enemy investigator felt unbearable.
"... No..." Mu Sicheng began to feel desolate for the other party, "They always won the midseason team competition last year? Even if they swallow the gambling pool, it wouldn't be so miserable, right?!"
Bai Liu raised three fingers:
"First, because there are no star players, they don't have much investment, and they don't have much gambling on the pot. They can only swallow the opponent's money."
"Second, even if you win, the majority of the gambling pool will be eaten by the winning spectators of the investment. After removing the handling fee from the gambling pool, the gambling pool that the team can get is only 5-10%. "
"Third, they were an unpopular team last year. They did not pay much attention to the mid-season. There was no audience to raise both of them. All they could get was the percentage of the base gold that doubled the charging points of the star players of the Big Guild. Five."
"In general, although they have been winning, they didn't get much league dividends."
Wang Shun sighed and added: "And I found out that the president of Russell Cemetery took the gambling pool points they won last year as a pension, divided into more than 80 shares and distributed them to those close to the dead team members."
Mu Sicheng heard mixed feelings: "... If you want me, I probably won't be able to sustain it."
"Then let's go back to the original question." Bai Liu opened his eyes. "If a person can't do anything, get nothing, he will live a very hard life all his life, and finally can't sustain it. For him, what Is it to maximize the value of death?"
"Money, power, fame and fortune are meaningless to a dead person. What is valuable to a dead person?"
Mu Ke, who had been silent for a long time, spoke: "I was recognized as valuable at the moment of death, and this value will always be remembered."
"I was studying abroad before, and the suicide/killing rate there was very high. Many people would go to areas where accidents were high before suicide/killing, or they would have been wandering in the street and saw robbers or gangsters. They will rush up to see righteousness and courage, and let these people kill themselves."
"An interview in a magazine said that more than 70% of people who have thoughts of self/kill before they die want to do a good thing that can make others remember themselves."
Mu Ke paused and continued: "Some self/killers will also form teams to help each other. I have read their special report called [self/kill community]. The leader of [self/kill community] generally also wants Self/killers, generally the lead person builds this community because he wants others to live, so he will find ways to help other people in this community, hoping that they will live."
"But what is strange is that because of the existence of the community, the suicide/kill rate of these people sometimes increases."
Mu Sicheng asked: "Why?"
Liu Jiayi, who was next to him, replied: "Because someone remembers them, they can be remembered to die."
"In this kind of community atmosphere that abandons oneself, it is easy to breed a mood of sacrifice. To describe it in an easy-to-understand sentence is—" Bai Liu looked at the system panel displaying Russell Cemetery information, "— I died for you, and I hope you will live for me and remember me."
"People who survive may suffer more than those who die, because they have more burdens, and the cost of death has become heavier."
Everyone in the meeting room was silent.
Wang Shun coughed, interrupted the stagnant atmosphere and continued: "Combined with the above information, Chairman Bai and I deeply analyzed the Russell Cemetery team."
"Everyone knows that for a team, the most important thing is the tactician, but because the members of the Russell Cemetery team are always changing, their tactician is different in each game, but their tactical style is different. Keep it fairly stable."
"So we guessed that the tactician who really made the tactics was not the team members who were pushed out for rotation, but the president of the Russell Cemetery cemetery who had never been behind the scenes."
"But this president is really mysterious. He hasn't participated in the league in the past two or three years. The information we have about him is very limited. I have used many methods to find a player who is said to have seen him by chance many years ago. A veteran player who participated in the competition of the president of Sear Cemetery, he told me that the president's skills were very peculiar, and he quickly cleared the opponent in the mist after he came on the field."
"This is not the first time we have seen the skill of defeating opponents at high speed, and this is not the most peculiar part of this guild leader's skill."
Wang Shun raised his head with a solemn expression: "We all know that the league game requires five players to participate, but the old player vowed to me—"
"—The president came to the game alone, and when he came on the field, the system said that there were five players in the Russell Cemetery on the game map, and the game was running normally."
After the meeting.
Tang Erda, who had been taciturn during the meeting, unusually stopped Bai Liu who stood up and was about to leave: "Can we talk about Russell Cemetery alone?"
Bai Liu, who had just gotten up to leave, sat back again. He raised his hand to signal Wang Shun, who had left last, to close the door. He sat on the chair and turned around to look at Tang Erda: "What does Captain Tang want to tell me alone? "
Tang Erda stared at Bai Liu: "Do you think [Russell Cemetery] is a [self/kill community] type guild?"
"It seems so at the moment." Bai Liu put his elbows on the table and shook his fingers. "Moreover, the president of the Russell Guild is the soul of this guild. He is a typical leader of the mutual assistance [self/killing community]. Psychological characteristics."
Tang Er frowned and asked, "What psychological characteristics?"
Bai Liu flatly looked at Tang Erda: "He is doing everything possible to save his members and team members."
"But Russell killed more than 80 people in the mid-season game last year." Tang Erda fingered the table and emphasized, "I don't see how sending new players to the league matches can be related to saving people."
Bai Liu suddenly smiled: "Captain Tang, how does Captain Tang think he can save a group of people who want to die?"
Tang Er had a fight: "I don't know."
"Give them hope." Bai Liu calmly looked at Tang Erba. "Victory in the league is their hope. This guild doesn't care about points, life or death. They just want to win. I guess the president of Russell Guild was at the beginning. I want to win desperately, and then use the reward of the champion—wish to save everyone."
"But they lost to the killer sequence, and they were eliminated in the next 90 qualifying."
Bai Liu said: "Captain Tang, do you remember Wang Shun saying that the Russell Cemetery team collapsed to abandon after the regiment was destroyed? Do you think a team that really wantonly sent new players to the field and was slaughtered will be killed once because of the regiment. Crash?"
"Only five people died." Bai Liu's tone was flat. "The lives of the bottom players are the least valuable thing in this game. Their victory in the mid-season shows that they can go this way. They It’s only a little bit away from success, maybe it will be done again."
"But Russell abstained. They didn't play in the midseason. They started from the beginning of the preseason. Captain Tang, what do you think is the reason?"
Tang Erda went silent.
He had an answer in his heart, but he felt that the answer was incredible and... sad.
Bai Liu continued: "Because of casualties."
"Starting from the mid-season, facing a strong team, even if they can win, they will have to experience another huge casualty. They would rather give up the rankings, fame, and points they have finally saved, risking huge uncertainty. , In order to reduce casualties, restart from the preseason."
"They just want to win, they just want to live."
Tang Er stroked his pocket, as if he wanted to take a cigarette out, but finally resisted it.
Bai Liu lowered his eyes: "The formation of this [self/kill community] type of guild requires the existence of a group that wants to self/kill from the beginning. I guess that the group of members when the Russell Guild was first formed should It is the same group who entered the game, and this group of people has a high probability of knowing each other in reality."
"This kind of self-harming community is not allowed in the country, so I guess that their group originally existed in the name of another group."
Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked at Tang Erda who was silent on the other side: "And you came to me alone because of this group, right Captain Tang?"
Tang Erda was silent for a long time before speaking hoarsely: "You just analyzed Russell Cemetery reminded me of one thing. At this time last year, the Bureau of Heretic Processing received a report of an abnormal incident, but after investigating it for a long time, No heresy was found, and the conclusion was finally settled with social incidents."
"What is this unusual case?" Bai Liu asked.
Tang Erda was still quiet for a while: "The owners of the Sunshine Real Estate jumped off the building collectively. A total of 47 people died. Within a month, they successively jumped down from the building because of the suspected heresy. At that time, the news was suppressed by us. After half a day, the investigation was clear. It was quickly released."
Bai Liu asked faintly: "What is the social incident?"
Tang Erda drew out a cigarette, and after Bai Liu nodded in agreement, he took a hard sip and said in a dumb voice:
"The Sunshine Real Estate is an unfinished real estate. It has been unfinished for more than three years. The foreign investment attracted by the investment developers went abroad when an accident happened. Jump down, and after the jump, the household is gone, and there is no one in the family who helped collect the corpse."
"After the person who jumped off the building died, the owners of the remaining unfinished building helped to collect the body and send it to the funeral home. The ashes after cremation were placed in their original house in the unfinished building."
Tang Erda slowly let out a puff of smoke: "The rooms in the ruined building are not occupied by many people now. They are all columbariums, like a cemetery."