ITGR Chapter 80 Part 2

Maintaining the mental network at critical value didn’t take Cen Zhen much effort, but the emotions that broke into his network this time were a little strange. If other people’s emotions were circular, the ones this time were a straight line. 

Cen Zhen frowned, but soon he realized that this might be the masked man’s mental logic. It was not overly strange for them to have some weird mentality, as they were semi-mechanized. 

“……” YaoJin calmly approached the door. Suddenly, he seemed to hear something and rushed over, pressing the door with his back. The door made a loud noise, opened a little, but immediately got pushed back close by YaoJin. 

He gritted his teeth and said, “Slave Market ordered them to open the door and remain waiting… This must mean something is wrong with this door, it must not be opened!” 

Lian Yu and ShouHe both looked up from the screen. After half a second, the former lowered his eyes and continued to type the code, and the latter instantly moved to YaoJin’s side and pressed the gap between the two doors close with one hand. The door that had been repeatedly shifting back and forth suddenly returned to its original position. 

“Found it.” Lian Yu suddenly said, and in front of him was a whole wall of code that even ghosts couldn’t understand. “There is a small mechanism on the door, which will trigger the poison gas in the vent. You all go find it and bring it down, but be careful not to break it.” Hearing this, YaoJin immediately searched the door carefully and finally found a skinny wire tube on the door axis. He carefully grabbed it, looked left and right, and finally decided to put it inside the operating table hole ShouHe opened. After all, the most dangerous place is the safest place. 

Because Lian Yu replaced his identity as a hacker, and there was Shouhe guarding the door, Cen Zhen was free. He used the time to study his mental network innerly. In contrast, the mental signal of the two Sentinels was not as obvious on this network. Cen Zhen only needed a mental tentacle to configure the connection, and there was no need to capture it by knitting a net. 

The thinking of the masked killer is simpler than that of ordinary people. Cen Zhen is like a hunter of another hunter. He uses his tentacles to poke and penetrate bit by bit, sensing the slight intrusion and change of emotions, and whether he can take the initiative to do things besides preventing them from entering in the outside world.

Lian Yu typed faster and faster. Cen Zhen’s eyes could no longer keep up with the speed characters show up. ShouHe couldn’t do it either. YaoJin is the only one who could do it on the field, but there’s no reason for him to do that. He wanted to save some energy to deal with the inevitably sudden situation coming up next.

Suddenly, the map bracelets of Cen Zhen, YaoJin, and ShouHe all lit up, and the map interface was replaced with the same task: Kill him!

There was a synchronized image of Lian Yu under the phrase that seemed to be stained with blood.

Cen Zhen showed Lian Yu the bracelet. Lian Yu raised his eyebrows and dared to smile provocatively in the direction of the camera.

“I know you all can see us.” Lian Yu said, and at the same time, he did not stop his action at hand. “You can see it happening but you can’t stop it. Aren’t you angry?” 

After saying that, he entered the last character, and all the codes were instantly cleared and turned into a progress bar. “Checkmate, I have found all the slave chips registered on this ship. Remember, I mean all. By the way, let the hacker who challenged me know that they were crap. When the progress bar reaches the end, the chips will be completely out of your control…” 

Lian Yu smiled grimly: “Bear the anger of the slaves.” Cen Zhen felt that this sentence should be changed to: Be ready to bear the righteous iron fist of the interstellar police “galaxy guardian Shou”! But the Sentinel’s words just now were still quite impressive, so he didn’t interrupt rashly. 

The provocation of the ants finally triggered the raging anger of the high-level officials of the Slave Market. Lian Yu also meant to communicate with them. He gave Cen Zhen a look, leaving a bug within the floating screen. Sure enough, a few seconds later, the floating screen that originally displayed the overview map of the Slave Arena turned black, followed by a huge panoramic picture reflecting on the wall. It has the most shocking view on this ship. 

The sound of the whistling sea breeze filled the eardrums. In the center of the picture, there were two people, or to be precise, one person, and a… seaweed-like creature.

Pan was blindfolded and gagged, both hands tied up, and stood precariously at the edge of the deck. Because of the blindfold, it was impossible to see whether he was crying, but it was conceivable that he must be terrified. In addition, Pan’s feet were chained with solid iron balls, and the wind made his body shake constantly as if he would fall into the waves the next second.

The huge waves could swallow him up in an instant, not to mention that there were several man-eating sharks on the seabed – these were the “pets” that the Slave Market specially raised beside the ships to satisfy the perverted demands of those buyers who loved sharks eating people.

There are several seaweeds wrapped around Pan’s waist. This is the only support that has kept him from falling. However, this support does not look stable at all. The other end of the seaweed grows on a creature that is not sure whether it is a human or not. This creature is made up of countless seaweeds, it has no face and no clear limbs, and the seaweeds help him move and get objects.

It seems that the seaweed man is very reluctant to be on the deck facing the cold wind of the sea. The seaweed tied to Pan loosens from time to time as if he will be capricious and leave at any time.

“……” YaoJin’s breathing stagnated, and his whole body was stiff, but even so, he did not utter a word and even suppressed his surprised expression. This suppression made his face look very distorted in an instant.

The screen zoomed out, and a man wearing an utterly fancy mask appeared in the center of the screen. His voice was processed and had a neutral tone with electronic music: “I admire you all very much. You will be recorded in the history of the Slave Arena for being able to do this… But I think everyone here is smart and should understand what the current situation is.” 

He paused and commanded condescendingly: “Stop tampering with the control of the slave chip immediately. Follow the original rules of the Slave Arena, we can make an exception and let all four of you survive, otherwise—” 

The seaweed man let go of the seaweed threateningly, and Pan immediately fell straight down without being able to scream. At the critical moment, the seaweed man stretched out his “arms” again and hanged Pan on the side of the ship like teasing a mouse. YaoJin’s eyes were red with anger, and he wished he could crush the fancy-masked man and the seaweed creature to dust, but he was also the one who spoke before the others: “Are you sick? You want to exchange him for this many of us?”

He gritted his teeth and said, “Does he have that much weight?” 

The fancy masked man said, “So you’re just going to watch him die without helping him? You’re so cruel.” 

“Let him die,” YaoJin said coldly. If they insisted on cracking the chip, Pan would definitely die, but if they gave up at this time, not only Pan would die, but all of them would die. 

YaoJin understood the deal and had rationality. But if Pan died, he would let everyone be buried with him. Suddenly, another voice broke the tense atmosphere between the masked man and YaoJin. Cen Zhen said lightly: “Forget it, I surrender… Lian Yu, stop the progress bar, we have to save him.” 

“Ah?” Lian Yu looked at Cen Zhen in confusion, “No, just let him jump into the sea, sacrificing him for the happiness of our family, isn’t it a good deal?” 

“The ship is too high, about 200 meters.” 

“Really… Just think of it as bungee jumping.” 

“I mean that hitting the sea surface from this height can smash people to pieces.” 

“……” Lian Yu thought for a while, “Yeah. But I still feel it’s a loss, how about we vote?” 

The masked man was already furious after listening to bundles of meaningless conversations, but seeing Lian Yu’s calm look further angered him: “It seems that you really don’t want your companion to live!” 

“We’d better save him. Hope only exists when one’s alive.” ShouHe suddenly interrupted, “The importance of life is not calculated by the number of lives.” 

“It’s a tie of 2 to 2…” Lian Yu thought for a while, “Then I’ll change my vote. After all, we are classmates. I can’t just watch him die without helping him.” 

He was about to move the control panel, but the masked man immediately shouted: “Stop, you are not allowed to get close to the control panel!” 

“……The one who is against the door, let go of your hand and let the killers come in.” 

The old man Shou who was guarding the door silently moved his hand away, and the masked killer who had been meticulously performing the task of pushing the door finally pushed the door open. They had already received the order from the fancy masked man, and the moment they entered the door, they went straight to the direction of the control panel. 

One person stood vigilantly with a gun in his hand facing everyone, and the other stood in front of the control panel, listening to the instructions in the headset, and mechanically and steadily inputting characters regularly. 

The fancy masked man laughed with satisfaction, harsh and arrogant. YaoJin disapproves of his companions’ behavior, but insisting on letting Pan die also isn’t something he can do. Seeing that the masked man was already destroying Lian Yu’s program, he immediately made the request: “Take him off the deck! Send him to a safe place.” 

“That won’t work.” The fancy-masked man felt that he had pinched the soft spot of this group of ants and returned to the side with absolute control. His attitude became arrogant, “Who knows what this person might have done? Before my programmer confirms that there is no problem, your friend will be hanging like this.” 

Unexpectedly, the first person to be angry with this sentence was the seaweed man. He waved seaweed to express his dissatisfaction. It was already humiliating for him to go into the sewer and sneak into the room from the toilet. Now he was asked to endure the cold wind, not to mention that it was really laborious to hang a person like this…

 

Original Author’s Note:

Righteous side – YaoJin: Let him die (pretend)

Villain side – Lian Yu: Let him die (true)

Righteous side – ShouHe: Let’s save him (true)

Villain side – Cen Zhen: Let’s save him (pretend)

The ability to identify the real protagonist from the villain will help you better survive in the ‘another world’.

 

Translator’s Note:

My apologies! I honestly thought I posted this already… On Monday…