Chapter 6 Sacrifice

“What do you mean?” Fatty asked me.

I looked at the watch. My forehead was covered in sweat and even my fingertips began to tremble.

Poker-Face had left me this mark, so Xiao Hua must have left this watch for Xiuxiu. It seemed that they only had twenty minutes left to do whatever they were doing, and after those twenty minutes were up, they might die.

Fortunately, I still knew Xiao Hua well and was familiar with a lot of his habits.

I could basically predict that when they came here, they somehow figured out how much time Black Glasses had left, so they set a time to rescue him and started the countdown on this watch. After leaving the watch here, they must have gone into one of these crevices to save Black Glasses.

But there was a problem: if they didn’t want us to follow them in, then all they had to do was let us know with a mark. But they also gave us this countdown, which showed that they weren’t sure what the situation would be like when they went in, and they needed our help.

So, they needed to remind us that there was a time limit once we went inside the crevice.

A little over twenty minutes…was this long or short?

If the countdown had already ended by the time we got here, then we wouldn’t need to go in at all—they’d probably all be dead—but there were still more than twenty minutes left. This meant that they weren’t dead yet, but they didn’t have any intention of coming out either.

What was this countdown?

It was a node.

Neither of them had left any extra words because they believed that I could understand what they were trying to tell us. There was enough tacit understanding between us, after all. So, what was the most concrete theory in my mind? After thinking about it, I found that it was actually very simple: this was the countdown for the sacrifice. In other words, Black Glasses’ sacrifice may have caused something to open, and after this thing opened, it would gradually close, thus resulting in this countdown.

Twenty minutes…it meant that the time limit for Black Glasses’ sacrifice was coming, and the thing that was opened by the sacrifice was about to close.

Yes, that was definitely what it meant.

Feeling absolutely certain now, I immediately said to Fatty, “Have Xiuxiu send that costume down.”

“You want to sacrifice Xiuxiu? So heartless.”

“Bullshit, I mean I’ll do it,” I said to him. “Give me all the grenades. Before the countdown is over, we’ll get an extension and buy more time for the three of them.”

Fatty looked me in the eye and immediately understood what I meant.

“Why does it have to be you?”

“If you dance in that costume, the ancient god will throw up last night’s meal,” I said to him. “Have some self-awareness.”

“How do you know that the ancient god doesn’t like to eat fat?” He argued. “Fat Master may be fat but I’m not greasy; I explode in the mouth.”

I pressed down on Fatty’s shoulder and looked at him, “I don’t know how Black Glasses could wear that costume when it was fitted for Xiao Hua, but you, I’m confident that you can never wear it.”

Fatty thought it over for a while, but when he looked at the countdown and realized that there wasn’t enough time left, he eventually nodded. “Fine! But when Xiuxiu comes down, you know she’ll want to do it herself. Have fun trying to persuade her by yourself when the time comes.” With that said, Fatty left.

After he walked so far away that he couldn’t see me anymore, I stood on the sacrificial platform, wearing the watch.

It was very quiet all around. I suddenly recalled everything that had happened before and began to think about what Black Glasses would do.

He had taught me, which meant that our train of thought should be similar. What would he have done at this time? He shouldn’t have died after he acted at that time, which was actually quite difficult to accomplish.

When I first studied under him, he taught me some basic underworld techniques, such as going to the supermarket and secretly stealing some goods right in front of the sales clerk as practice (of course, it was just a simulation and not real theft). When I tried it for the first time, he directly reported me to the security guard, and I had to run three blocks just to get away.

This was a simple rule in our business. In fact, he just wanted me to understand that even if you trusted someone, you still needed to have certain habits that would keep you completely safe.

So in the supermarket, what I should have done was: while he taught me, I would secretly finish “stealing” without letting him find out. That way, he would keep waiting for me to steal even though I had already done it, thus giving him no chance to betray me.

If he was a good person, then I would have successfully completed the homework; if he was a bad person, then I gave him no chance to harm me.

This was the relationship between taking the initiative and remaining passive. Essentially, if you wanted to become stronger, you had to be more proactive and do things faster, earlier, and more covertly than normal.

What would he do? I squatted down and thought hard. Of course, I could simply detonate the grenade when the ancient god touched me, but in that case, I’d definitely be a goner. So, I had to detonate it when the ancient god saw me while also leaving a certain amount of distance between us.

But that thing could flow through the rock crevices. Rather than a living creature, it seemed more like a collection of many things. Where should I blow it up? Where was its weak spot?

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