Survivorship Bias

Chapter 1: Start the overlay

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A beam of red laser light moved to the forehead of the person next to him. With a bang, the semi-viscous plasma mixture splashed onto his wrist.

It was the first scene he saw when he woke up, and it was as bad as a nightmare.

With a blank mind, he sat on the chair and stared at the man who had been headshot and fell to the ground. The man's eyes were the same as his own, staring straight open.

"That's what happens when you try to force your way off [the altar]."

Accompanied by the noise in his brain that resembled an out-of-tuned signal, he heard a very holy voice, like the singing in a church.

He found that his reflexes were abnormally slow, and it took a lot of energy to even shift his gaze to his wrist.

The wrist was seriously injured, the flesh turned outward, and the mechanical bones and hydraulic joints inside were exposed. The blood plasma of the person who was killed thirty seconds ago flowed along the arc of his wrist at a slow speed, heading towards the metallic silver bone gap.

My hands were shaking and I couldn't help it.

He raised his hand and rubbed against the hem of his clothes, trying to wipe away the blood of others, but he didn't feel the pain of the wound rubbing against his clothes. The black T-shirt on his body seemed to have been stained with a lot of blood, but he couldn't see it clearly.

Looking around, there are still a few people I don't know. Facing the people who died in front of them, everyone has different expressions. Some people can see obvious fear on their faces, while others only have Lower numbness.

When he cast his eyes, several of them avoided their eyes, as if they were afraid of meeting his eyes.

He wanted to see these faces more clearly, but his vision seemed to be soaked in water, his eye sockets were sore, and in the next second, tears fell without warning, and he raised his hand in confusion to dry it.

That voice appeared again.

"Congratulations to the survivors for entering this round of the game, let's settle the results of the last game first."

"Or, you can also meet new friends."

As soon as the words fell, he heard a very subtle "di—" sound from the white noise in his head. The next second, a virtual holographic projection panel appeared in the left field of vision, and the information on it seemed to be about himself:

[Variable name: An Wugui

Attribute: Male, 20 years old

Game rounds: 5

Winning rate: 100/100

Hazard Class: SSS]

No blame.

Seeing these three words, a massive amount of information poured into my mind in an instant like overloaded data: the appearance of this world and the abnormal operation method, all the memories from birth to adulthood, every face passing by on the street , chaotic red light district, artificial blue sky and endless acid rain.

The huge amount of information made An Wujiu breathless, and a new projection panel appeared on the right side of the viewing angle, showing that he had obtained 10,000 holy coins.

All the initial impressions began to piece together some outlines of the matter - he seemed to have entered a game, where the winner could get the so-called holy coins for settlement, and lost the game...

Thinking of the man who just fell to the ground, he just didn't follow the rules, and the result of losing might be the same.

The five senses are real, and he can clearly feel the pain caused by the injury. Is this some new virtual reality game

Soon, An Wujiu realized that his amnesia seemed not so conventional, more like it had been artificially edited, only partly incomplete.

He remembers his own time, a world in which administrative organizations collapsed, national borders blurred, and almost anyone could become a commodity. He even recalled the small group at the top, the business giants so big that they would crush the state apparatus underfoot.

What about himself

All the pictures in memory are so warm, they are real and clear first-person perspectives, and there is the same person in them. The beautiful and gentle woman hugged him as a child, put him to sleep, taught him to read and smiled at him.

The picture goes backward frame by frame, she is gradually aging, but she always takes care of him. She softly calls him An'an, which is his baby name.

But everything ended in front of the hospital bed. She was dying on the bed, covered with transparent and slender tubes, and the breathing mask covered the smile she was trying to show.

This is his mother.

From childhood to adulthood, all the memories related to it, the love he really got flowed back into this body.

The mother in front of the hospital bed seemed to be trying to tell him something.

The picture starts to shake and everything becomes distorted.

She wriggled her lips, the sound she made was completely covered by the sharp noise in An Wujiu's mind.

Passively withdrawn from the memories, An Wujiu was in great pain, the veins in his neck were protruding, and his temples were still throbbing faintly.

He wondered if the hippocampus in his brain had been destroyed, or something else had inserted itself. An Wujiu wanted to check if there was a neural interface in his body, there must be some kind of microprocessor plugged in, but his badly injured right hand was very difficult to lift, probably due to a broken bone, and his hand was still shaking.

He raised his left hand and stretched it behind his ear and the back of his head, only to realize that his hair had grown to waist length, but he didn't know it.

Really didn't want to make his hands shake like this, An Wujiu bit his right fingertips, frowned and looked sideways, and caught a glimpse of a guy wearing a mask.

This person stood at the farthest place from him. He was tall and dressed in a black windbreaker. He looked like a young man. He didn't show his true face. He wore a mechanical mask made of some kind of synthetic material on his head. The surface was as smooth and white as the long-lost sweet white glaze, with a warm luster, but there were traces of block splicing on the mask.

The front of the mask is the appearance of Guanyin, with downcast eyes, slightly raised mouth corners, and a little red in the center of the upper eyebrow. The horizontal and vertical assembly stitching lines and the metal buckle connecting the back of the head give this Guanyin image a subtle sense of fragmentation and mechanical feel.

Seemingly unable to touch the interface, An Wujiu lowered his left hand.

He was extremely puzzled by everything here. He remembers every little thing he got along with his mother, how he grew up, his father died early, he and his mother depended on each other for life, and there is a lovely younger sister.

At this time, I should be with my mother in the ward, why did I appear here

"As before, before the official battle begins, we have prepared a warm-up game for you. Survivors who win the warm-up game can gain game advantages or the right to choose a single-player or team-up format."

The white void in front of him began to flicker when the sound appeared, like the color bars flashing when the screen fails. A round table and eight surrounding high chairs appeared in front of them.

"Please take a seat."

The others sat down according to the instructions, and An Wujiu didn't want to be shot to death when he didn't understand, so he followed the instructions and sat down.

The moment I sat down, digital pulse bars and afterimages of highly saturated colors appeared on the surrounding pure white background. After the flash, they were on the roof of a skyscraper. The dark sky was haloed by mixed neon light beams. The aircraft, the tracks staggered near the tall buildings, and the holographic projections of advertisements that looked like pollution were dizzying to see .

An Wujiu felt that his eyesight was also damaged, so he squinted slightly under the stimulation of light, and he could still see a part of a huge holographic projection 30 to 40 meters high in his field of vision, which was a virtual actress with a head full of jewels, leaning against a skyscraper.

They are on the top floor of this world, where they can see the bustling lights and sounds, the gutters without floating chemicals in the slums, the piles of discarded prosthetics and the rotten and unattended corpses in the corners.

Looking back, the people on the round table looked at each other, each with their own ghosts. Compared with the sensual dogs and horses outside, this place is much simpler - eight people, eight seats, a display screen embedded in the table in front of each seat, and nothing else .

At least not a game that requires force to decide the outcome.

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

The other seven people are of different ages. At first glance, they don’t have the same characteristics of being selected. Starting from myself, from right to left, they are a young woman wearing a cheongsam, a strong man, a blond old man with a western face, a man wearing a mechanical Guanyin mask, and a thin man. A middle-aged man in a suit, a boy with freckles on his cheeks and black-rimmed glasses, and a red-haired boy who looked only fifteen or sixteen years old.

An Wujiu frowned.

Why was he the only one injured so badly

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

Sitting on his left is the little boy with fiery red hair, wearing a loose and shabby baseball jacket and a black hat. He looks easy to get along with. His eyes are large, staring at an old Rubik's cube that keeps spinning in his hands.

An Wujiu started to observe almost instinctively, and saw that he was standing on the edge of the chair with both feet bent, his fingers were flexible, without thick calluses, his body was thin and his arm muscles were not obvious, he should not be very good at fighting and using weapons.

An Wujiu stretched out his left hand towards him, "Hello."

He wanted to say "get to know each other", but the moment he opened his mouth, he found that his speaking rhythm was very problematic, as if he had a language barrier.

The boy was stunned, still holding his Rubik's Cube in both hands, his fingers still, like a bionic rabbit that was simulating eating but stuck.

"What's wrong?" An Wujiu asked softly, he didn't think his attitude was so 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 at a middle-aged man wearing glasses sitting diagonally opposite him uneasily. The man at the end of his line of sight looked to be at least 40 years old, with sunken cheeks and shrewd eyes.

"What's the matter?"

Before An Wujiu could say anything, the middle-aged man pushed his glasses on the bridge of his nose, crossed his arms, with a very typical defensive posture, "An Wujiu, you have killed so many people with cruelty, and now you pretend to be innocent, do you think someone will kill you?" Do you believe me?"

After speaking, the rest of the people at the table also looked at An Wujiu, as if they were waiting for something.

"I don't... remember." An Wujiu replied truthfully, speaking very slowly and punctuating the sentence was not quite right.

In the eyes of others, this long-haired man has a perfect skin, but he is so beautiful that he is natural, without the slightest artificial feeling. His skin is fair and clean like the moon over the city when there is no pollution, but his complexion is not good and his lips are pale.

His eyes were pure and soft, slightly out of focus, and his fingers trembled slightly. He felt frightened, but it didn't seem like he was shaking. The trembling looked more like anxiety or other mental disorders.

This look doesn't look like the bad embryo that Yang Ming said, and it doesn't look like someone who can win in the [Altar].

An Wujiu lowered his eyes and thought. Judging from the boy's reaction just now, the people here have already recognized the fact that [An Wujiu is very dangerous] long before the man said this.

Whether the man was telling the truth or not, the situation was not in his favor.

The middle-aged man sneered, "Are you pretending to have amnesia this time?" He pressed his hand on the table, raised his eyebrows, and said every word, "Don't treat me like a fool."

"You guys really don't change your nature. It was the same way before. You pretended to be innocent and wooed others to form an alliance by relying on your pretty face. In fact, anyone can take advantage of you by any means."

For this description, An Wujiu felt a sense of disconnection that did not belong to him, and felt a little at a loss.

But he noticed that the Mechanic Avalokitesvara on the opposite side put his hand on his chin after hearing this, and leaned forward, as if he was very interested in the man's accusation against him. This seemed to be the first time he saw this person move since he came in, otherwise he would have suspected that 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 that round was the bloody gambling house. An Wujiu swore that he could save everyone's lives and let many people join his camp , but in the end he figured out the rules himself but didn't tell everyone, just watched those who believed in him die one by one, and finally he survived alone with all the chips in their camp!"

During the speech, his voice trembled a little, as if it was because of fear. He pointed at An Wujiu excitedly, "If you don't believe me, you can check the holy coins he settled in the last round, it must be ten times more than mine."

After saying these words, An Wujiu felt more and more bad.

"So it turned out that your last round of battle was so intense?"

These words came from An Wujiu's right side.

He turned his face, and there was a young woman in a pink cheongsam sitting on his right side, with a snake-shaped necklace around her neck, she was glamorous, and she had thick and beautiful black curly hair with a natural, not artificial luster Feelings are rare in this day and age.

With a smile on the corner of her mouth, she stared at the nail polish on her fingertips, then turned her eyes to An Wujiu, trembling deliberately, "It's so scary, it seems that handsome guys can't believe it."

An Wujiu bewilderedly had some thoughts because of her last sentence.

With such a fierce battle, it should not be easy for those who also survived.

"In any case, the winner of this game cannot be An Wugui. The rest of us must work together to exclude him first, otherwise anyone may become his victim."

He spoke loudly, and the others fell silent for a moment, as if by default.

An Wujiu knew that what he said at this time was useless.

Because it's a really exciting proposition. Although the next game and the rules are unclear, it is of course best to be able to set up a public target, otherwise the gun is likely to be aimed at any of them.

At this moment, the voice appeared again, "Since you are all seated, let's get acquainted with each other's names first."

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

Looking at it from An Wujiu's perspective, his own name was suspended in the thick night, almost overlapping with the name of the person opposite.

The noise in my head paused for a moment.

[Shen Ti]

It is the mysterious mechanical Guanyin.

Guessing Numbers in Volume 1 Warm-up Match

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