The Earth is Online

Chapter 6

“Ah, my book!”

The little girl ran towards Tang Mo at a speed that humans couldn’t reach, grabbing ‘The Secret Behind the Mayan Civilization’s Disappearance’ and holding it to her chest. She held the large match in her left hand and a book in her right hand. After determining that it was the book she lost, she ran into the bookshelves to sit down and started to read.

“My mother will test me on the book tomorrow. I have to read it quickly.”

In this large and spacious library, the sound of the little girl reading the book was loud.

The huckster’s face became extremely pale and his lips turned blue as he stared at the mosaic girl with the book in her hand. It seemed like he had just been pulled from the water. In just a few minutes, the huckster’s hair was soaked with sweat. He looked at Tang Mo and smiled bitterly. “It turned out to be that book. When did you figure it out?”

Tang Mo looked down at the huckster’s right hand holding the stick. On the back of the hand, the white angel wing pattern gradually turned black and became demon wings.

Tang Mo’s voice was very calm. “From the moment I saw you.”

The huckster’s eyes widened with disbelief. “How can that be?”

The little girl sat on the floor reading the book and didn’t seem to hear any noises. The game ended so Tang Mo and the huckster headed to the reading area of the library and sat down in the chairs.

Tang Mo looked at the mosaic girl in the distance. In this whole library, she was probably the only one with the patience to read right now. The huckster’s timid fear disappeared. He sat in front of Tang Mo and started talking about the truth of the matter. “I pulled you into this game.”

This was surprising for Tang Mo.

The huckster said, “It was an accident that I sneaked into the library. I sneaked in before you entered the library. As you know, many of us unemployed people will spend time at the library. Once it is closing time, the security guards will find us and drive us out of the library. However, the security guards can also make mistakes. Your library is too close to the black tower. After the ‘earth is online’ message was issued, I chose to observe the tower from here. Then on the third day, I heard it speak to me while I was reading a book.”

The huckster raised his eyes and looked at Tang Mo with a serious and fanatical expression. He seemed to be seeing a great existence instead of Tang Mo.

“It told me that the game was about to begin.” The huckster looked obsessively at the air and repeated, “I was chosen by it!”

Tang Mo didn’t chat with him.

All employees of the library knew that the huckster was just a crazy religious person, not neurotic. After a while, the huckster calmed down except for a slight flush on his face. He said, “The game selected for me was a 1 VS 1 game. I couldn’t finish it alone. I was thinking about leaving the library and finding someone to start the game with. Then you came in. I knew you and after thinking for a moment, I deliberately made a sound to bring you over. Now I think that was the most wrong decision I’ve ever made.”

Tang Mo asked him, “What is the penalty for failing the game? What is elimination?”

The huckster shook his head. “I don’t know, it didn’t say. The words you heard are the same as mine. It never said anything extra. It just told me that the game opponent is chosen by me while the game target is up to you. That’s fair. Before the game officially started, I didn’t know it was a book-hunting game. Perhaps it is because you are a librarian that the game chose a suitable identity.” Then the huckster paused and looked earnestly at Tang Mo. “How did you find me?”

In fact, this matter was very simple. “You aren’t a madman nor a fool. Your reason for sneaking into the library wasn’t very good and every performance after I met you was fearful. God...Mr. Chen, you are a fanatical religious person. The man who said to me that ‘the black tower is God.’ I believe after three days, he wouldn’t be panicked and fearful when selected by the black tower for a game. He would enjoy it instead.”

The huckster’s stick fell heavily onto the chair. “It was like this...”

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Tang Mo continued, “It was just a suspicion. I couldn’t be sure if that was how you would really react.”

“Then how did you know it was me?”

“Because the game is fair.”

The huckster looked at Tang Mo with confusion.

Tang Mo touched the angel wings on the back of his hand. “I also like to play games. A game I often play can be considered one of the fairest card games in the world. In the game of bridge, skills can be stronger than luck. Meanwhile, a game like stud is one where luck can be stronger than skills. But these games are equivalent in that they are absolutely fair to both sides of the game. After the game starts, luck can also be a type of strength. Both sides have no gaps in their strength, it depends on who has good luck or bad luck. The game itself is fair.”

The huckster couldn’t understand his words. “What does this have to do with our game?”

Tang Mo looked at him. “Don’t you think this game is very unfair?”

“What?”

“There are only three rules in the game. First, violence is prohibited. This has a profound meaning but I won’t talk about it right now. Second, the angels can get a hint during the day. Third, the demon can burn a bookshelf at night. It seems that the angel has to find a book among hundreds of thousands of books. That makes the game very hard. Meanwhile, the demon has a 3/23 chance of winning the game.”

The huckster suddenly understood. “Do you mean that this game is unfair to the angels?”

“No.” Tang Mo smiled and shook his head. “It isn’t fair to the demon.”

The huckster looked stunned.

“For angels, the game has a way of solving the problem. He just needs to find the book based on clues. But the demon can only do one thing. That is to burn the books. He doesn’t get any hints to tell him where the book is. Then the game becomes like this. The angel is playing a puzzle game while the demon is making a pure gamble. The angel can rely on luck and skill to complete the game. The demon can only rely on luck.”

The huckster argued, “But the probability of the angel finding the book is much lower than that of the demon.”

“It can be said that after the game started, luck became a type of strength. The demon didn’t burn the book and his luck is O. That is no different from the angel. There is also the ‘violence is prohibited’ rule of the game. This completely stops any possibility of the demon forcibly getting a clue. Then the demon will have to find clues from other places.”

The huckster had a pale face and couldn’t speak. After a long time, he gave a heavy sigh and helpless laughed. “I should play more games. Tang Mo, the bridge game that you play often should be fun. Maybe I should play it afterwards.”

“If there is a chance then I will take you to play it together.”

The huckster smiled and nodded.

Tang Mo’s eyes narrowed. “If the person I was playing with was ‘him’, perhaps the outcome of this game would be completely rewritten.”

“Who is he?”

Tang Mo smiled. “A friend I often play bridge with. He is very powerful. He would be able to think of all these things and then lie to me perfectly. At least, he wouldn’t make the mistakes that you did.”

The huckster didn’t feel ashamed. Instead, he humbly sought advice. “What mistakes did I make? I thought I performed well. When I saw you, I thought you would find my loopholes and acted afraid. Afterwards, I took the opportunity to talk as little as possible, not doing much and just listening to your orders.”

“But you still made mistakes. For example, when I said there was no one in the library except for us and that I don’t know where the demon is, he said ‘He is hiding.’ There are two people in the angel team. A normal response is to subconsciously think there are two people on the demon team and to use they instead of he.”

The huckster said, “I am suddenly very interested in this game of bridge.”

“I thought I could expose you on the first night but I didn’t expect the bookshelf to actually burn. I thought you had a partner. But that isn’t realistic. The demon having two people and the angel having only one person is unfair to the angel.”

Unless the black tower thought that two people added up to one of Tang Mo. Tang Mo coughed and didn’t say those words. “I thought about it on the second day. Who really helped you set the fire? There were two possible answers. The first is that as long as you think about it, the bookshelf will catch fire. You don’t need someone to help you control it. The second possibility is that someone helped you set the fire. The two of us and the little girl are the only ones in the library. She is the only one who can help you set the fire apart from the black tower.”

The huckster said, “I didn’t even know she would help me set it on fire.”

“It is understandable. Don’t forget, the little girl hates reading books. She would be willing to help if you want to burn the bookshelf. This reason is plausible. By the way, I looked at her hair when she came there. There was a bit of the tail that was burnt. Maybe it was accidentally burnt when setting the fire.”

The huckster collapsed in the chair. “I am convinced of my loss.”

Tang Mo originally wanted to say more, but he shook his head and smiled when he saw the huckster’s appearance.

There were many things that the huckster didn’t notice, such as how Tang Mo tricked the huckster into burning the H-type bookshelf. Another example was the little girl’s three tips that long exposed the identity of the huckster.

The three tips contained a lot of nonsense, but there were three main points.

First, the demon would lie.

This was an indication for the angel: The demon will hide his identity and stay by your side.

Secondly, the angel knows this book.

This hint seemed useless because Tang Mo knew too many books. Even the ones he recently read, there were at least a few hundred.

Third, the demon knows the book.

This meant it was a book that both Tang Mo and the huckster knew.

The scope was still very wide.

The huckster had been reading books for a year in the library. There were at least a thousand books that both him and Tang Mo knew. However, the difficulty of this game wasn’t so large. If the game wasn’t able to be passed, both players would end up eliminated. Therefore, the answer must be something that Tang Mo and the huckster could think of.

Tang Mo’s first thought was ‘The Secret Behind the Mayan Civilization’s Disappearance.’

It was a book that Tang Mo and the huckster had talked about before the black tower incident. If both of them were asked which book was the most memorable, it was absolutely this book.

The huckster absolutely wasn’t stupid. The fact that he could think to act fearful and his realistic performance was already very good.

Tang Mo suddenly thought that if this was Victor, Tang Mo’s initiative would be taken away the moment both of them entered the game together. Victor would definitely not put himself in a weak position like the huckster. The huckster’s actions were to make Tang Mo ignore him and to make less mistakes. However, this meant he lost the ability to reverse Tang Mo’s ideas and mislead him.

If it was Victor, what would he do?

At the same time, in the distant capital, a tall and handsome man dressed in a striking military uniform strode into the meeting room. He took his seat in a corner of the conference table. His eyes were like an eagle’s as he looked at the scientist who was speaking and the text on the big screen.

“Three days ago, the black tower was in a phantom state. We call this the type A mirage. In the past six months, we have done a variety of experiments to test the relevant data of the black tower...”

In the meeting room, the scientists discussed it fiercely. In the end, the chief speaker said, “Today is the third day. What conclusions have you come to?”

The scientists were all silent.

Fu Wenduo was the lowest ranked here and silently moved to look out the window.

In the dark sky, there was a large black tower, sharp like a knife, that hung on top of Beijing’s 21.72 million people.

It was 3:42 a.m. on November 18th, 2017. There was 4 hours and 18 minutes until the three day elimination period ended.

The library.

The huckster sweated nervously in his chair, his shivering lips exposing his uneasy inner heart. Right now, no one knew what it meant to be eliminated. Maybe they might just lose the game, maybe something more.

At that moment, the sound of footsteps was heard from the depths of the bookshelf.

The little mosaic girl ran over to Tang Mo with her book. The two ponytails swung beautifully in the air. It was difficult to hide her joy and she handed the large match to Tang Mo.

“You are an angel. Since you found the book for me, I will give it to you.”

Tang Mo didn’t know if he should laugh or cry as he accepted the big match. He couldn’t help asking, “Are you the little girl who sells matches?”

In a flash, the thick mosaic on the little girl’s face showed a gap. Tang Mo’s eyes widened as the mosaic over the little girl’s eyes disappeared, revealed a pair of big eyes that were like a dead fish. The other places were still covered by a mosaic. It was only the eyes that were exposed.

Tang Mo held his breath, wary of this strange change.

The dead fish eyes glared at Tang Mo, filled with deep contempt.

“Uncle, you haven’t grown up yet. Have you ever seen such a lovely little match girl?”

Tang Mo who turned from brother to uncle, “...”

She lost the mosaic just to express her contempt?!!!

The author has something to say:

Mosaic: You are the little girl who sells matches. Your family is the little girl who sells matches!

Tang Mo: My family only consists of me ^_^

Fu Wenduo who was about to enter the family, “...”