The black tower beeps, and the seven players stand in front of a giant green worm, looking up at the huge turkey in front of them. The turkey seems to have heard the sound of The black tower, and it stomps its feet in annoyance, splattering the ground with blood.
"Damn The black tower, Goo Goo, it said I would harm my own child. It can't be, it can't be. My children, you are all mama's babies, how could mama harm you?" The big turkey looked at the seven players in front of him with those tiny green bean eyes, his expression did not look like a lie, but in a moment, when he noticed the seven players standing in a random pile, he suddenly flipped his face, his eyes bursting with a horrible light.
"Why haven't you all lined up coo!"
The angry roar fell and the big turkey stomped down hard, shattering a tile with a vicious stomp. He glared at his seven children, "Everyone wants to be the first to eat the worms, but you have to get in line. Why are you so disobedient, what are you all doing cooing when Mummy tells you to get in line!"
Tang Mo frowned and was about to speak when a male voice rang out from beside him, "Mum, we'll be in line in a minute. But before that, do you want to answer some questions?" The "mama" sounded as natural as if it were a real chick.
Tang Mo turned her head to look. It was the tall, thin young man who spoke, with a smile on his face, looking earnestly at his 'mother'. With such a good boy in his life, the turkey's anger slowly dissipates. His temper is like the weather, it comes and goes as quickly as it says it will.
The big turkey said, "Goo, my child, are you so eager to learn about the world when you're just born?"
The young man said without changing his face, "Yes mum, I have a question for you."
The big turkey looked down at the big green worm on the ground, it looked up again and said, "Well, you'll have to ask soon. Mummy has to go and help you with this big smelly worm, how are my lovely children going to eat it when it stinks so badly."
The man laughed, "Then I'll ask." After a pause, the young man stared at the big turkey and asked, "... What's the way to get through this copy?" The voice went cold all of a sudden.
The big turkey was constantly slapping the big bug with its wings to make its meat more tender and tasty. At these words, it paused slightly in its patting of the big worm, and soon it looked up at the young man with a kind but malicious smile. It was smiling, but this smile was very different from the one it had just given, as if it was looking at a smug, clever human being. It said this, "My child, so ... what is your second question?"
The young man narrowed his eyes and stared at the big turkey and stopped talking. The big hen looked at him with a sarcastic smile.
The mother and son, who had just been on good terms, were suddenly at sword point.
After a moment, the young man smiled, "Must I ask two questions?"
The big turkey winked, "Goo, that's your second question ..."
"What is the correct order of queuing?" A voice came from behind the young man and he turned his head to see Tang Mo adding with a calm expression, "That's the second question."
The big turkey seemed to notice Tang Mo only then, and its eyes flicked around Tang Mo and the young man's body. As soon as it did, it picked up the large worm on the ground and placed it on its back. The big turkey replied, "The way to pass this copy, didn't The black tower tell you. Coochie, my boy, line up and eat the worms, don't make it hard for your mother, that's how you pass the copy yah. As for the correct order ..."
The big turkey looks up at Tang Mo, who calmly follows him.
The big turkey failed to see any expression on Tang Mo's face; he was neither excited nor anxious. He was a little disappointed, but being a loving mother, he encouraged, "My boy, you are a clever boy. I told you the correct order, didn't I? You have a brother and a sister and a brother."
A female voice exclaimed, "Are you saying that the order in which we enter the copy is the order in which we line up?"
The big turkey turned his head to look at the girl who had spoken. It was one of the two little girls, and she seemed to realise that she had just gotten too excited and hurriedly shut up and hid behind her companion. The big turkey fixed the big bug on her back with her wings: "Child, you are too greedy and can only ask two questions goo. But mummy loves you so much, so of course she won't judge you. You'll have to line up properly."
The big turkey smiled and stepped on a soft red mass of flesh, and the little girl nodded her head repeatedly in fear.
Amidst the pungent smell of blood, the big turkey looked around at its seven children. It smiled benevolently, "Mama's got to go deal with this big stinker. Coochie, kids, you must already be lined up here waiting for Mummy in an hour, right?"
No one spoke.
With a nasty twinkle in its tiny eyes, the big turkey turned around happily and hummed a little tune: "Seven cute little chicks, one bad big green worm. The little chicken cubs want to eat the big green worm, where's mum? Mummy ..." Suddenly it turned around, its eyes locked dead on the girl who had just spoken, and laughed strangely, "Mummy wants to eat the little chickens!"
The little girl was shaking with fear.
The big turkey gave her an odd grin, hummed the strange nursery rhyme and strutted out of the meat food section.
After the big turkey had left for good, the two young girls hugged each other in fear, not knowing what to do. Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo looked at each other, and something gradually dawned on them. At that moment, a male voice rang out in front of them, "It looks like it's now time for the one-hour queue, let's get to know each other, what's your name?"
Tang Mo turns his head to look at the person who spoke.
The young man had been so calm that he hadn't lost his cool, even when the big turkey had just flipped him off and taunted him. He walked up to Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo, his gaze wandering over them. The gaze was measured, but not malicious.
Tang Mo said lightly, "My name is Viktor and he is Donji."
Fu Wenduo gave Tang Mo a long, meaningful look, not refuting the claim.
The young man wasn't offended and smiled, " Nanjing Raiders Xiao Jitong, these two are my teammates, Little Qiao, Ningning ." He pointed to the blonde foreign kid and the long-haired young woman. The two nodded together towards Tang Mo, and finally Xiao Jitong said, "These two kids just don't know what's going on, they didn't see the blockade order and came here too."
He was talking about the two little girls.
The two young girls were clearly not as mentally strong as the three Xiao Jitong, and even less so than Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo. They were so scared that they turned pale, the girl with short hair was slightly more hardened, she swallowed and suppressed the fear in her heart as she explained, "I ... am called Xiao Yun and she is Yuanyuan. We were pulled into a copy a fortnight ago and only got out of it yesterday, so we didn't know about the blockade order."
Xiao Jitong: "No wonder."
Fu Wenduo's voice trailed off: "What is a blockade order?"
Xiao Jitong: "You should have noticed when you came to Nanjing that it was different from the city you were in before. You sound like you're from Southern China," he looks to Tang Mo and then to Fu Wenduo: "Are you from Beijing? I don't know how things are in your area, but in Nanjing there is a man who has pulled together a group of people who have decided to establish some kind of order in the city."
"That man is you?" Tang Mo asked.
Xiao Jitong laughed: "Of course not me. I don't belong to that organisation. They have too much to do, finding all the access points to all the copies of Nanjing, trying to find out more information about The black tower. They've got to find out how to get everyone through The black tower game, and they've got to shelter a bunch of very weak preppers. ..." After a pause, he looked at the two young girls: "You're preppers? Don't get me wrong, I'm a prepper too."
The short-haired girl hastily shook her head and said in a reverent tone, "Team Xiao, we didn't misunderstand, we understand."
Tang Mo raised an eyebrow when he heard the name 'Team Xiao', and Fu Wenduo looked at the young man with interest.
Xiao Jitong said, "You'll have plenty of time to find out about this city of Nanjing later, let's get back to this game for now."
Xiao Jitong's two teammates were very obedient to him. The little boy and the long-haired woman stood by and kept quiet, trusting their teammate wholeheartedly and letting him organise everything. But the two young girls also trusted Xiao Jitong. The two girls obviously did not know Xiao Jitong beforehand, but they looked at him with trusting eyes.
Tang Mo found this discovery somewhat interesting.
Xiao Jitong says: "First of all, it's the game itself. That big turkey is not as simple as it looks, it doesn't really think of us as its own children. It's a game of The black tower and all it wants to do is eat us and make us into these things on the ground."
The ground was littered with bits of flesh so messily mixed together that it was long since impossible to tell which piece of meat belonged to which person.
The Great Turkey's malice was revealed when Xiao Jitong asked it a question. This copy of reality is ultimately a game, and the Great Turkey is the boss of the copy, and if it really thought of the players as its own children, it wouldn't have the pieces of meat all over the place.
Xiao Jitong's idea coincided with Tang Mo's, who continued without saying a word: "We have an hour of queuing time. Each time we ask a question, we think about the queue. If you make a mistake in the queue, you go into a game of eagle and chicken, and the game lasts for an hour."
The short-haired girl thought, "So, Team Xiao, does this mean we can get through the Eagle Catching Chicks game if we can make it through an hour." She thought, "We can ask two questions at a time, and just now Team Xiao asked the big turkey how to get through the game, and it obviously didn't really want to answer, so it asked a second question. I'm guessing ... could it have chosen one of the two questions to answer? That's why it asked what the second question was!"
Her companion quickly retorted, "No, Cloud, if that's true, it just answered two questions."
Xiao Jitong laughed, "She's right. Rule number four of the game, the big turkey answers at least one question and may not lie."
The timid little girl asked, "But it just answered two questions."
"The black tower only requires her to answer at least one question and not to lie. If she gives a correct answer to any one of the two questions, she does not break the rules of the game."
The crowd looked at Tang Mo in unison.
Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo are like two players in a sauce, rarely talking. They were new and had only known everyone for less than half an hour, and the two young girls had almost ignored them. Hearing him say this, a thoughtful look crossed the short-haired girls' faces. Xiao Jitong smiled: "Yes. So of the two answers it just gave, there's a chance that both are true, and a chance that only one is true. We have to assume the worst, that it lied and only one answer is true."
The crowd was deep in thought when Tang Mo suddenly said, "The bomb, the pickup truck, and the knife that sneaked up on the big turkey earlier, you guys did that?"
The long-haired woman who hadn't spoken pointed to the blonde child beside her, " Little Qiao did it."
The little boy said proudly, "This time the captain and we all came prepared and brought lots and lots of props. I just didn't expect to not be able to use my powers on this copy, fucking turkey, I hate it so much, it hits me!" The little boy was angry and aggrieved.
Xiao Jitong explained, "We entered the game this morning and upon entering we found that we could no longer use our powers and had to use props. Fortunately, we had more props with us and there were three of us, so we fought with that big turkey before we entered the supermarket. As you can see, once we fought it, we were judged to be matricide and would be struck by lightning. So when the big turkey went out to pick you two up I conspired with Little Qiao and set up some traps. Those props were there a long time ago and we didn't strike again to kill the big turkey. I wanted to try if this would avoid the matricide effect and do some damage to it."
Tang Mo recalls, "It did get hurt, but once it triggered the trap that killed it, it still triggered the matricide effect."
The black tower did not react when the big turkey was wounded by the bomb. But as the knife was about to pierce its chest, The black tower struck a thunderbolt at the boy, punishing him for attempting to kill his mother.
This brings the problem back to the beginning.
"So how the hell do we get in line?" The short-haired girl named Xiao Yun said, "The big turkey gave two answers. One is to queue up to eat the bugs so we can pass the copy, and one is that the order of queuing is the order in which players enter the copy. I don't think it could have told us the queuing order so easily, it couldn't have answered this question, otherwise we would have passed the level immediately, it must have been lying about the second question." So why is the second question asking this?
The latter words were not spoken by the young girl, who looked curiously at Tang Mo, but the meaning was clear.
Tang Mo's participation in The black tower game was mostly in the role of a resource person, and in the old days, not only the second question but also the first one would have been asked by him, rather than Xiao Jitong. There are many leadership types in The black tower, but most of them are too strong to give the right advice, and instead lead the team to the end of the game. The first question Xiao Jitong asked was the one Tang Mo wanted to ask, so he didn't say much.
Tang Mo likes two kinds of teammates. One type of teammate is one who shares his own ideas and can understand each other's meaning with a single glance. For example, Fu Wenduo and Xiao Jitong, who seems to be very powerful and mysterious. And then there are the idiots. Don't think about anything, just do what they say, follow orders unconditionally and don't cause any problems for the team.
This high school girl is also quite smart, but not by a hair. Luckily, she is quite modest and not too overbearing, as some other players who pretend to be smart would have given Tang Mo a bigger headache. When he and Fu Wenduo first met in Pinocchio, Tang Mo was punked by his "smart" teammate, and the game went downhill right from the start.
Tang Mo was about to answer, when a male voice beat him to it, "There are two purposes for asking this question. Firstly, to ensure that the answer to the first question is definitely the correct one. Secondly, even if it's the wrong answer, we don't know the correct order of queuing at the moment. There is a 50-50 chance that the big turkey will tell the truth, and in case it does, we'll be crooked if we go in line in that order."
Tang Mo looks back at Fu Wenduo. Fu Wenduo was standing beside him, and when he saw Tang Mo looking at him, he curled his lips into a soft smile.
With Fu Wenduo's explanation, the young girl now understood.
It doesn't matter what the second question is, there is only one thing that matters: with this question they must be able to tell which answer is the correct one. Apart from that, the question asking the order of queuing reveals something about the attitude of the big turkey: it doesn't want the player to get through the game unscathed.
The short-haired girl suggested, "The order in which we enter the copy is definitely not the correct order anyway, so let's just get in line out of that order and do it another way. That would kind of rule out one way of lining up."
Tang Mo shook his head and said, "It's still in that order."
The short-haired girl said in dismay, "Why?"
"Do you know how many different ways there are to sort the seven?" A low, muffled female voice came from the back of the group. Tang Mo looked up at the speaker, it was the long-haired woman called " Ningning". Dressed in a tight black suit, she gave the two high school girls a cold look and her voice was icy: "Suppose the positive and negative order is the same, without the head and tail, which is 7!/2, for a total of 2520 orders. Assuming the big turkey must ask us to give heads and tails, that's 5040 ways." The voice stopped and she looked coldly at the two girls, "Which of the remaining 5,039 ways of ordering do you choose?"
The long-haired woman spoke without mercy and the two young girls all shut up at her words and meekly stopped talking.
Xiao Jitong laughs: "With odds of 1/5039, I wouldn't want to go for a random choice. And the big turkey is probably thinking along the same lines, thinking that we must think it's lying and thus reverse the thinking and let us rule out the correct answer. So I also agree with lining up the copies in the order in which they were entered. Now that the queue has been determined and there's no extra information to go on now, we can now separate and prepare our own props for the next game of 'Eagle Catcher'."
The seven men drifted apart, each preparing their weapons and gathering their strength for a great battle.
Neither Tang Mo nor Fu Wenduo thought they could win the game in the first round. Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo went to the corner of the supermarket and Tang Mo took Granny Wolf's little parasol and tried to wave it. Then he took out two more pocket knives and a pistol. There was only one bullet left in Fu Wenduo's special, and Tang Mo did not intend to use it. He fills the magazine with ordinary bullets.
"It's yours." Tang Mo handed the pistol over.
Fu Wenduo was standing by the frozen food cupboard, observing his surroundings, when he heard this, he turned his head to look at Tang Mo. He froze slightly and quickly took the silver pistol and asked, "For me to use?"
Tang Mo nodded: "We don't know how powerful the big turkey is for now. From the way it was counted by the foreign kid just now, it doesn't seem to be powerful. But it will transform into an eagle next time. Whether this transformation will make it stronger or not is unknown, but we must be prepared for anything."
Tang Mo explains carefully, and Fu Wenduo just looks at him, listening quietly. When he had finished, he looked up and found Fu Wenduo looking at him steadily, the corners of his mouth slightly curled. Tang Mo's heart froze and Fu Wenduo asked, "So why did you give it to me?"
Tang Mo: "..."
It was your gun!
Tang Mo was silent for a moment and said honestly, "When it comes to a real fight, at the level I'm at ... I can't shoot."
Fu Wenduo nods, seemingly accepting this answer.
Tang Mo: "..."
Little did Fu Wenduo know that with the ban on powers, guns were not as important to Tang Mo. He is not a good shot, and without checkmate powers, a gun is less important to him than a knife, much less a small parasol.
Unable to use his powers, Tang Mo can only rely on the small parasol and ... Fu Wenduo. The matches are sealed in his wrist tattoos with his psychic powers, which he can use, but not his psychic powers, so he can't remove them. Without his powers, his physical condition has also deteriorated and, although he hates to admit it, Tang Mo's greatest reliance is on Fu Wenduo.
But Tang Mo was also worried, so he gave Fu Wenduo his pistol: "If you can't use your powers, you'll be better off without a weapon, so you should have a gun." Fu Wenduo's powers are related to physical changes and he uses his own body as a weapon in every battle, but now he can't use it either, so his strength may be greatly reduced.
Fu Wenduo, however, said, "I have a weapon."
Tang Mo froze, "You did?"
As soon as the words left his mouth, a dark blade flashed in front of Tang Mo's eyes. Tang Mo's breath caught and his body reflexively dodged backwards, but Fu Wenduo was quicker than he was and wrapped his left hand around Tang Mo's back, cutting off his retreat. It was like a lightning bolt, a shadow of a thing, brushing Tang Mo's eyelashes. The sensation of the cold blade against his eyelashes was clearly reflected in Tang Mo's heart and he felt his heart stop and his scalp tingle. Only when Fu Wenduo withdrew the dagger did he regain his senses and look steadily at the small knife in his opponent's hand.
But the length of a grown man's hand, it was sharp and pointed, pitch-black, in the shape of a replica military dagger. In the dim light, a deep blue glow streaked across the blade. The dagger was so plain that Tang Mo would not have given it a second glance anywhere, but he remembered fondly the feeling of it passing in front of his eyes just now. It was as if death had come, and if he had only gone a little further, the blade could have easily cut through his hardest skull.
Tang Mo asked, "Is this your weapon?" He had never seen Fu Wenduo use it.
As if sensing Tang Mo's meaning, Fu Wenduo said, "Important weapons should be hidden so that if necessary, the enemy can be defeated."
The answer to this is quite understandable. Tang Mo also kept a large match hidden in his wrist tattoo and did not take it out until necessary. On several occasions, he has suddenly taken out the big match to catch his enemies off guard.
Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo don't have as many props as the boy, but they have a few, but they are all good. Tang Mo straps the small parasol around his waist, Fu Wenduo stows his pistol and with a flick of his fingers the black dagger disappears into his hand. When the two returned to the meatpacking area, the long-haired woman and the boy were setting up a new trap.
Seeing their return, Xiao Jitong smiled, "Ready to go?"
Tang Mo nodded gently. He looked over at the young boy crouched on the ground setting up traps and exclaimed, "You have so many props?"
Next to the boy was a small mountain of props, about half a metre high, all kinds of strange and bizarre props. The little truck that had just assassinated Big Turkey had been scrapped and kicked into a corner by Big Turkey, but they had so many more props.
Tang Mo was surprised by the amount of props. In the four months since the launch of Earth he had been playing the game constantly and had been rewarded with many props, but he had never seen so many. Fu Wenduo also looked at the mountain of props with great interest.
Xiao Jitong said, "Because I'm coming to this copy, I purposely brought some extra out." He smiled faintly and said no more than that.
Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo walk into the distance and watch the three Xiao Jitong from afar.
These three are really interesting. An eight or nine year old sized child not afraid of blood and broken flesh, a human child with lots of ideas and calm in the face of unexpected situations. A long-haired woman with a cold face, very cold-tempered, exuding an aura of being a stranger and refusing to communicate with anyone. And a captain who looks the most ordinary, but is actually the most mysterious, always smiling, but no one knows what is going on in his mind.
They are also particularly famous, so famous that two Nanjing players who had never met them before named them very easily and with great respect.
"... Nanjing Raider Group." Tang Mo pronounced the name under his breath.
Fu Wenduo's low voice rang out, "You have an interest in them?"
Tang Mo looked at Fu Wenduo and shook his head, "No, they seem to be a different group to Luo Fengcheng's Atak group, they feel like they have their own set of rules. He just said that they had brought a lot of props with them because they were participating in this copy. You and I don't have that much combined, so we both have a lot of props among the players. Raider group, active in The black tower game ..."
Nanjing's players are really special.
Tang Mo wasn't particularly interested in the raiding group, but he remembered something: "Since they're so good, and many Nanjing players know them, maybe we can look for your cousin through them?"
Fu Wenduo didn't answer the question, he said, "Of those three, who do you think is the strongest."
Tang Mo, who was still a little short of fighters, watched carefully for a moment, "The Xiao Jitong?" The voice stopped and Tang Mo added, "Is that the woman with the long hair?"
"It's the woman with the long hair."
In the meantime, the young blond foreign boy was burying himself in setting up the props. He was moving very quickly, as if he was building blocks, easily finding the props he needed from the mountain of props and placing them in the right places, occasionally measuring the distances between them, mumbling the words under his breath. After placing a black stone, he suddenly said, " Sister Ningning, what are you doing, come and help me count."
The long-haired woman glanced down at him and said coldly, "Looking for the captain."
The little boy bristled and muttered nothing more.
Xiao Jitong approached, "What's wrong?"
"They're talking about us." The long-haired woman pointed to Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo in the distance. Fu Wenduo had already noticed her sight, and he looked up at the long-haired woman and Xiao Jitong for a moment before quickly turning his head away and continuing to talk to Tang Mo. The long-haired woman frowned as her prying eyes were caught by the others, "They were just discussing which of us is the strongest."
Xiao Jitong: "There's no need to discuss this, they'll soon find out you're the strongest."
The little boy crouching on the ground then raised his head and asked curiously, "So who is the strongest of them all?"
The long-haired woman closed her mouth without speaking. Xiao Jitong turned her head to look at Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo in the distance.
Tang Mo is also looking at him with a smile. Fu Wenduo, on the other hand, only glanced at it before turning his attention to the pile of props on the floor.
Xiao Jitong looks at the game for a while and replies to his companion: "Both of them are not easy, they have at least cleared the first level of The black tower, or even the second level of The black tower. The one who is a bit more talkative is probably very good at the game, he is very good at The black tower. But the man in black is probably the better fighter between them. He smells like blood, he's killed people."
Xiao Jitong laughed as he gave a categorical conclusion, " Little Qiao, Ningning, he's a stowaway."
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What the author has to say.
Tangtang: You don't feel good if you don't hurt me every day, do you!
Mr. Fu: ...#WhereIamWhoIamAndWhatIDid#*2