The second-to-last day of the preseason and midseason tournaments.
Wang Shun took a deep breath as he entered the Wandering Circus meeting room, holding a stack of materials. He stared straight at everyone seated inside. "I believe everyone should know the information about our opponents this time well enough to recite it backwards."
"Because they have no data for us to analyze." Wang Shun bitterly smiled. "The Russell Cemetery Guild—our opponents for our final match."
As he spoke, he opened the system panel.
"Russell's performance in the preseason matches is basically the same as the last two years: giving up single and double matches, and only focusing on team matches. For a team of newcomers like us, this is both a good and bad thing."
"The good thing is that we only need to fight one match. The bad thing is that this match is the team matches you guys suck at."
Wang Shun tapped on the system panel, swiping to another screen and displaying a small video. He pressed play. A murky, gray fog surged, and only a few vague figures could be seen running in it, letting out heavy gasping sounds.
Wang Shun pressed pause, his expression heavy.
"This isn't the first time I've shown you this video. This is a recording of Russell Cemetery's last match. Almost all of Russell's matches in the preseason were like this."
"A shroud of fog; nothing could be seen clearly."
Bai Liu leaned on the back of his chair. "We've analyzed this before. Russell Cemetery is most likely doing this to maintain the secrecy of their members' skills—assigning a member with a fog-concealment skill onto the team and using it in the match to not only muddle the opponent's field of vision, but also to conceal their information from the audience."
Wang Shun sighed. "This strategy was really successful and cannot be replicated. They can do this because they don't need the audience's support. Because they did this the entire preseason, aside from Russell Cemetery's death count, we know no other information about them."
"Compared to last season, Russell Cemetery's death count has sharply lowered this year."
Wang Shun paused. "It probably can't be described as a significant drop. In this year's preseason, Russell Cemetery smoothly made it to the preseason finals with only two members dying."
"Before this point, I didn't understand why the tenth-ranked Russell Cemetery wanted to give up this year's midseason qualifications and switch to fighting preseason matches in humiliation. But now that we're at this point, after Guild Master Bai's analysis, I finally understand my error in thinking."
Wang Shun shook his head and exasperatedly smiled. "I've always thought that Russell Cemetery was a cruel, inhumane, cold-blooded guild with no regard for human life, recklessly sacrificing teammates' lives to obtain victory."
"They actually aren't?" Mu Sicheng propped up his chin as he asked, spinning a pen in his hand. "But this team sacrificed eighty newcomers last year."
Bai Liu took the pen Mu Sicheng was spinning. "Not at all."
"On the contrary, it's exactly as they declared: a shelter for desperate players, a warm, humane cemetery. Russell Cemetery is a typical closed-community guild. They have a sense of mutual support between them, almost like close neighbors—very united and caring."
Question marks began to form above Mu Sicheng's head. "The unity and care of sending people out to their deaths?"
"You should change your line of thinking. When they joined the guild, they already clearly knew in their mind that they were going to die. In other words, these people didn't join the guild wanting to live at all."
Bai Liu raised his gaze. "But rather, despite wanting to die, they don't want to die so meaninglessly."
"And Russell Cemetery is the place where their deaths can have the highest value."
Mu Sicheng leaned on the table, his eyes on the pen Bai Liu had snatched. "But even if that's the case, what does that have to do with Russell Cemetery and unity and care?"
Bai Liu lowered his gaze toward Mu Sicheng, suddenly changing the subject. "What do you think is the biggest value of death?"
Mu Sicheng paused and sat up straight, thinking hard. "Money? No, I can't be sold after I die. Fame? After I die, this seems to have no significance either…"
Ultimately, Mu Sicheng clicked his tongue and gave up, leaning against the back of his chair. "I don't know what these people are thinking. People will have nothing after they die. Whatever you exchange for death has no value. Besides, I've already entered the game. If I risk my life here to earn points, I should at least be able to exchange them for something, right? Death isn't worth it."
"That's you." Bai Liu calmly said. "A highly skilled newcomer that major guilds were falling over each other to recruit. Mu Sicheng, you're top-tier even in real life, have good family circumstances, and are enrolled in a top-rate university. You have a clear understanding of your own value, so you wouldn't easily choose the option of returning to zero."
"You haven't competed before, have you?"
Mu Sicheng was confused. "Compete what?"
"Social competition."
Mu Sicheng frowned. "Isn't that something you only experience after joining the workforce?"
"No. In places where resources are monopolized, there's bound to be social competition." Bai Liu raised the pen. He unfolded a blank piece of paper and started writing. "The game's points can be earned through playing games, just like how wages are earned through working; the game can be considered a type of job."
"But various guilds appeared in the game. They organized and contracted playing the game in more efficient ways, improving the efficiency of earning points through this work-like method of gaming. They also provide all sorts of protections, reducing your chances of dying from the game, just like various companies."
"Normally, for the sake of earning points more efficiently and also for the sake of surviving, players would actively join these guilds."
"This is the first mechanism that was formed, and it's also a reasonable operating mechanism." Bai Liu wrote the words [Original Mode] on the paper. "Normally, this kind of mechanism can keep running for a long time before it starts to collapse. But at this point, there's a setting in this game that accelerates the collapse of the mechanism."
Bai Liu slowly raised his eyelids. "That is gambling."
"The gambling in this game is a kind of expectation-based loan mechanism. This mechanism ties your faith, interests, and even your life to the guild, which doubles the cost of your bets. Even if a player knows they will most likely be drained to death by this guild, because of gambler's mentality, sunk costs, and the difficulty of finding another place to go, it's very hard for them to escape from the guild, and this creates the first essential element for social competition."
"—Binding."
"The tighter the binding, the slower the flow of members between guilds becomes. As it slowed down, everyone started to realize that finding another place to go was harder and harder. So, choosing a guild became a lifelong decision. Then, during their newcomer period, everyone frantically engages in social competition to get into a big guild, lowering their own status, and so on."
"And once it reaches that step, you'll realize a very fascinating fact." Bai Liu tapped the tip of the pen on the paper twice. "The efficiency of guilds earning points has increased, the speed of game cycles has increased, and more and more points are circulating in the gambling pool. The total points of the entire game are increasing exponentially."
"But the benefits new guild members receive keep getting lower, and even though the guild has accumulated so many points, in order to maintain their ranking, they ultimately invest them all into the league, leaving very little saved."
"Then where did these points go? Were they swallowed away by another person?"
Bai Liu put the pen down and lightly pushed it with his fingertips. The pen rolled in front of a stunned Mu Sicheng.
Mu Sicheng reached out and took the pen Bai Liu pushed over, feeling a small chill in his spine. "…The gambling pool."
"Bingo." Bai Liu smiled. "That's right. The gambling pool mechanism places bets each time with fivefold leverage odds, which may seem like a losing deal, but all the points everyone gathered to grab out of the gambling pool, along with the points they earn themselves, eventually flow back into the gambling pool. Then, in the process of winning and losing, the bulk of it is quietly swallowed up by the 5% to 15% fee taken each time."
"And the fact that the wealthiest guild is Gamblers' Alliance, not Killer Sequence, shows that the gambling pool is actually the game's biggest money maker."
Bai Liu lifted his gaze toward the data on Wang Shun's system panel. "Imagine you're an ordinary player in the game. Your skills and panel are very average. Although you can survive, you can't join any big guilds and have no way to become a star player."
"You drift about without purpose, striving to survive. Then, at some league game, you can't help but invest all your points into some battle. After losing, you have nothing left. In your collapse, you realize: it's very difficult for you to obtain money from the gambling pool."
"But after each league, the points that come out from the gambling pool with fivefold leverage will raise the prices of items within the whole game. If you don't dare to participate in gambling, the points you have won won't increase, and the props you can buy become fewer, and surviving in the game becomes more and more difficult."
"You don't have extra points in your hands to exchange for money to use in reality. The game isn't a place to satisfy your desires at all. On the contrary, it makes you more miserable. Because, after working six days in reality, you finally get a day to rest, yet you still need to [work] in the game, fearfully earning points to buy props so that before next week's game arrives, you can save up enough points to purchase a prop that can save your life."
Both of Mu Sicheng's eyes were blank. "…Thanks, after putting myself in that situation, I kind of feel like dying."
Bai Liu continued speaking. "In the game, exchanging points for props to use in reality is done by high-ranking players who have points, and by some reckless players who just want to indulge in the moment. The former are a minority, while the latter players, under the catalyst of the gambling pool, have already become the largest group of players. In other words, gambler players. That's why Gamblers' Alliance can grow so large."
Wang Shun nodded at Bai Liu's explanation. "But there are both Gamblers' and non-gamblers' alliances. After Guild Master Bai analyzed it for me, I specifically went to investigate the average gambling pool investments of the members of the Russell Cemetery guild."
"The results astonished me." Wang Shun tapped the panel, displaying a table of data. "Their average investment in the gambling pool doesn't exceed ten points per person. They can truly be called a non-gambler alliance."
"Gambling is a form of thrilling, future-oriented consumption. When the desire for this kind of consumption decreases, it indicates that they are very pessimistic about their own future expectations."
Wang Shun sighed. "No way to enter big guilds, not daring to gamble, experiencing the ordeal of a death game once a week. Many people in reality would be tired. Going to work every day but not having any money, struggling financially, entering the game with difficulty—in the end…"
"They're living through much hardship."
So hard that even he, an opposing investigator, couldn't help but feel a sense of pity.
"…That can't be…" Mu Sicheng had started to think that the other party was miserable. "Didn't they keep winning the team battles in last year's midseason? Even if they swallowed the base points from the betting pool, it shouldn't be this bad, right?!"
Bai Liu raised three fingers.
"One, because they don't have star players, they have no investors. They have no base points from the gambling pool and can only swallow their opponents'."
"Two, even if they win, the bulk of what's in the gambling pool is taken by the winning spectators who invested. After subtracting the gambling pool's fee, the team only gets 5% to 10% of the base points from the gambling pool."
"Three, they were a dark horse team last year, and the midseason tournament didn't get much attention, so hardly any spectators placed their bets on either side. All they could get was 5% of the base points, which doubled from the points earned by the big guilds' star players' small TVs."
"In short, although they kept winning, they didn't benefit much from the league's dividends."
Wang Shun added with a sigh, "And I also found out that the guild master of Russell Cemetery divided the gambling pool points they won last year into more than eighty portions as consolation money and gave them to the relatives of the deceased members."
After listening, Mu Sicheng had complex feelings. "…If it were me, I'd probably be unable to hold on either."
"Then let's return to the original question." Bai Liu raised his eyes. "If a person can't accomplish anything, can't obtain anything, and has struggled financially their entire life, and finally can't hold on anymore, then for them, what would be the way to maximize their death?"
"Money, power, fame, and profit all mean nothing to a dead person. So what has value to a dead person?"
Mu Ke, who had been silent the whole time, spoke up. "To be recognized as having value at the moment of death, and for that value to be remembered by others afterward."
"Back when I was studying abroad, the suicide rates over there were very high. Many people went to high-risk areas before committing suicide, or would always pace back and forth on the side of the road. When they saw robbers or thugs, they would rush in to act heroically, letting these people kill them."
"A journal once said that 70% of people with suicidal ideation want to do a good deed before their death to let people remember them."
Mu Ke paused for a moment, then continued. "There are some suicidal people who form groups to mutually help each other. I've seen a special report called [Suicide Community]. The organizers of [Suicide Community] are usually people who also want to commit suicide. Usually, an organizer sets up the community because they want others to survive, so they try every way possible to help the other members in the community, hoping they'll live."
"But the strange thing is, because of the existence of the community, the suicide rates of these people sometimes actually go up."
Mu Sicheng inquired further. "Why?"
Liu Jiayi, beside him, replied, "Because there are people who remember them, so they can die a memorable death."
"In this kind of self-abandoning community atmosphere, it's easy to develop a sense of sacrificing oneself. To put it in simpler terms—" Bai Liu shifted his gaze toward the panel displaying Russell Cemetery's information. "—I'll die for you; I hope you live on in my place and remember me."
"Those who survive may end up suffering more than the ones who died, because they carry a heavier burden. Even the cost of death becomes heavy."
Everyone in the meeting room fell silent.
Wang Shun coughed, breaking the frozen atmosphere, and continued speaking. "Combining the information said, Guild Master Bai and I thoroughly analyzed Russell Cemetery's team."
"Everyone knows that for a team, the most important role is the tactician. But since the members of Russell Cemetery have kept changing, their tactician has been different in every match, yet their tactical style has remained quite steady."
"So we came to the conclusion that the tactician who actually formulates the strategies isn't part of the team members who are rotated into play, but is actually the guild master of Russell Cemetery, who has never played in a match."
"But this guild master is too mysterious. They haven't participated in any league games for nearly two to three years. The amount of information on them that we found is extremely limited. I used many methods before finally finding an old player who claimed to have watched the Russell Cemetery guild master compete many years ago by chance. They told me that this guild master's skill was very strange. Once they entered, they quickly wiped out the opponent with a shroud of fog."
"We've seen skills that quickly defeat opponents before, but that isn't the strangest aspect of this guild master's skill."
Wang Shun raised his head, his expression solemn. "We all know that a league team battle requires five players to participate, but that old player swore to me with absolute certainty—"
"—the guild master went up alone to compete, yet when the match began, the system declared there were five players from Russell Cemetery on the game map, and the match proceeded normally."
After the meeting was adjourned.
The usually silent Tang Erda, who had been quiet during the meeting, unusually called out to stop Bai Liu, who was about to get up and leave. "Can we talk privately about Russell Cemetery?"
Bai Liu, who had just gotten up and was preparing to leave, sat back down. He raised his hand to signal to Wang Shun, who was leaving last, to close the door. Sitting in the chair, he turned around to face Tang Erda. "What does Captain Tang want to discuss privately with me?"
Tang Erda stared at Bai Liu. "Do you believe [Russell Cemetery] is a [Suicide Community]-type guild?"
"At the present time, it seems to be." Bai Liu rested his elbows on the table, clasping his fingers together. "In addition, Russell Cemetery's guild master is a key figure in the guild. They have the typical psychological traits of a mutually beneficial [Suicide Community] organizer."
Tang Erda frowned and inquired, "What psychological traits?"
Bai Liu calmly looked at Tang Erda. "They are currently using every method to save their guild and team members."
"But eighty-something people in Russell Cemetery died last year in the midseason." Tang Erda tapped the table with his fingers, emphasizing, "I can't see how sending newcomers onto the league battlefield has anything to do with saving lives."
Bai Liu suddenly smiled. "What does Captain Tang think needs to be done to save a group of people who want to die?"
Tang Erda paused. "I don't know."
"Give them hope." Bai Liu calmly looked at Tang Erda. "The league's victory is their hope. This guild doesn't care about points, doesn't care about dying; they just want to win. I'm guessing the guild master of Russell Cemetery initially wanted to win at all costs, and then use the champion's reward—a wish to save everyone."
"But they lost to Killer Sequence, and then in the next ninety ranked matches, they were completely wiped out."
Bai Liu spoke, "Captain Tang, do you remember Wang Shun saying that the Russell Cemetery team collapsed and forfeited after being wiped out? Do you think a guild that recklessly sends its rookies to be slaughtered would crumble after a single wipe?"
"Only five people had died." Bai Liu's tone was indifferent. "The lives of ordinary players are the least valuable thing in this game. Their victory in the midseason tournament already proved that taking this path could work for them. They were just a step away from success, and maybe if they tried once more, they could make it."
"Yet Russell forfeited. They didn't play in the midseason tournament. They started from the beginning in the preseason matches. Captain Tang, what do you think is the reason why?"
Tang Erda fell silent.
His mind had one answer, but he felt that this answer was absurd and… miserable.
Bai Liu continued speaking. "Because of the casualties."
"If they started in the midseason tournament again, they'd have to face powerful teams. Even if they win, they'd still have to experience huge casualties. They were willing to give up their hard-earned ranking, fame, and points, risk immense uncertainty, and start over from the preseason matches to reduce casualties."
"They just want to win, and just want to live."
Tang Erda reached into his pocket, as if he wanted to pull out a cigarette, but in the end, he restrained himself.
"The formation of this type of [Suicide Community] guild requires the initial presence of a group that wants to commit suicide. I speculate that when the Russell Cemetery guild was first formed, that batch of members likely entered the game together, and in real life, they probably knew each other."
"Such self-harming communities are not allowed in the country, so I speculate that this group initially existed under the name of another type of community."
Bai Liu lifted his gaze and looked toward Tang Erda, who hadn't spoken. "And the reason you came to speak to me alone is because of this group, isn't it, Captain Tang?"
Tang Erda was silent, and only after a long time did he hoarsely say, "Your analysis of Russell Cemetery just earlier reminded me of something. Last year, the Heretics Handling Bureau received an unusual incident report. But after checking for a while, there weren't any heretics, so it was concluded as a social incident in the end."
"What was this unusual case?" Bai Liu asked.
Tang Erda was silent for a moment. "The owners of units in the Yangguang Apartment Complex collectively jumped to their deaths. A total of 47 people gradually jumped from the building over the course of a month. Because it was suspected to involve a cult, we initially suppressed the news, but after half a day, once the investigation was complete, it was quickly released."
Bai Liu indifferently asked, "What was the social incident?"
Tang Erda took out a cigarette and lit it after Bai Liu's nod. He inhaled deeply and said in a hoarse voice:
"The Yangguang Apartment Complex was an unfinished building project, stalled for three years. The developers who had brought in foreign investment fled abroad with the funds when trouble struck. Those who jumped were the owners of the unfinished apartments, leaping one household at a time. After jumping, their family lines ended; there wasn't even anyone left at home to collect the bodies."
"After the people who jumped died, the remaining owners of the unfinished units helped collect the bodies and send them to the funeral home. After cremation, their ashes were placed in their original units in the unfinished building."
Tang Erda slowly exhaled a mouthful of smoke. "Now, very few people live in the apartments of the unfinished building. It's all urns, like a cemetery."