Chapter 2: The Feeble One with a Strength of 3

As a first-tier city in the Central Continent, Hai City had a remarkably fast courier network. By three in the afternoon the next day, Ye Sang Sang had received the equipment.

She had thought it would be a bulky helmet-like device meant to cover the head and receive brain signals. She had even considered hiding it somewhere, keeping it out of sight from the nurses and attendants for the time being.

To her surprise, it was only something like a neck ring. Once the strap was fastened snugly around the throat, it clung close to the skin. Pure black, resembling metal yet extremely supple, with a silver ring attached at the back of the neck. If one did not look carefully, it could even be mistaken for a mere ornament.

Seated in her wheelchair, she played with it for a while before setting it down. Then she picked up the box that had come with it. Inside were a wireless charging device, an instruction manual, and a black card bearing the official emblem of a sword, a rose, and a balance scale, with the corners stained in crimson.

There was a line of text on the card.

After reading it, Ye Sang Sang found the game’s official team rather interesting.

The card said that Ye Sang Sang, and others like her, were to stream the entire internal test live.

If she did not wish to, Star Ring would take back the device.

If she did, it was simple enough: she only needed to sign her name on the card.

Star Ring would receive the information through the card, send back a response, and once the card was placed against the round piece of the device, it could be unlocked and activated.

Ye Sang Sang did not care either way, but she had no pen. When a nurse came to give her medicine, she borrowed one and signed her name.

The next time the nurse came, seeing the pen there, she would naturally pick it up and put it away.

That evening, Ye Sang Sang logged into the game without difficulty.

According to the manual, once inside the game, she would appear to be asleep to the outside world. Unless subjected to especially violent stimulation, there would generally be no visible bodily reaction.

She closed her eyes, and darkness swallowed the world before her.

Two seconds later, the Star Ring logo appeared in front of her. The surroundings brightened, and the black title of Crime Files emerged.

Welcome, dear internal test player Ye Sang Sang. Please enter your game ID.

Note: once entered, it cannot be changed for ninety days.

Looking at the virtual screen before her, Ye Sang Sang typed in her own name.

Player ID: Ye Sang Sang

Mental Strength: 8/10

Intelligence: 8/10

Physical Strength: 3/10

Overall Evaluation: It is not recommended that you confront anyone head-on. With your physical strength, even killing a chicken would be difficult.

Ye Sang Sang silently stared at it. Did this holographic game test that sort of thing too?

Then came ninety-nine game notices, including how to exit in an emergency and warnings about certain dangerous conditions that might arise in the space during gameplay.

After she clicked confirm, a white expanse appeared with scenario selection options.

Below the selection were the game instructions. Ye Sang Sang took a look.

The rules were simple: once a scenario was chosen, the player would begin drawing an identity card.

After receiving an identity card, the player had to act the role and complete the identity’s course of action.

If one drew the role of investigator, one had to solve the case within a set period of time.

If one became the criminal, one had to carry out the crime, ideally reproducing it perfectly.

The victim was relatively “easy,” resembling, in a sense, a battle-royale script. There were usually three endings: being injured, being killed, or escaping alive.

At the end, one would pass and receive a rating; different ratings yielded different game items.

Game items included, but were not limited to: revealing the true culprit, skipping the current plot, saving the plot, increasing in-game stamina, obtaining more clues, and so on.

In the official version, there was no need to draw identity cards; players could simply choose for themselves. But in the internal test, identity cards were randomly assigned by the system.

Ye Sang Sang suspected this was probably to ensure unpredictability, so the livestream audience would not grow bored.

Ding. Hello, player. The livestream is now starting. Please get ready.

The streaming platform is Star Ring Live under the Star Ring group. Your livestream account has already been reviewed and approved. You may log in and check it after exiting the game.

Ye Sang Sang froze, and then a screen appeared in the upper right of her field of vision, with dense, scrolling comments beneath it.

Wow! Right from the start, a beauty assault!

Star Ring chose a celebrity for the internal test? Don’t know her. But she looks kind of weak.

This beauty is obviously terrible at games, especially a reasoning game like this. You need brains for strategy and combat alike; can she even handle that? Don’t go screaming in shock the moment something happens.

The black comment text had no border, but it was confined to one area. Only when Ye Sang Sang tilted her head did she truly see the content.

She looked at the double-arrow icon for collapsing and expanding, tapped it, and folded the comments away.

The livestream screen could not be collapsed; that was the live viewpoint.

Ye Sang Sang began selecting the crime file scenario she wanted to play.

According to the promotional videos and the official website, these scenarios were all created based on real cases. Every detail in the game had been painstakingly reconstructed on-site, and the actual case content also referred to official records before being processed through ultra-intelligent simulation and calculation.

The degree of restoration was astonishing, with the ability to connect to real materials for derivation and completion.

After looking for a while, Ye Sang Sang felt they were all about the same. She casually picked one and clicked start.

A strange sensation of weightlessness washed over her.

The first thing she perceived was sound: the patter of rain striking the ground and the car windows.

When she opened her eyes, light flashed past her, along with the sound of wheels crushing through rainwater.

Before her was a steering wheel. Streetlights shone through the rainy night, making everything look hazy.

Knock, knock, knock.

Just as her mind was still somewhat muddled, a knocking sound came from the window.

She turned to look.

A middle-aged man with stubble, dark skin, and a rather honest face was knocking on the car door. Through the glass, Ye Sang Sang watched the shape of his mouth.

Reading his lips, she guessed he was saying something like: “Driver, are you taking passengers?”

She glanced toward the car’s front right side and the passenger seat. On the front right was the vehicle’s passenger sign, and on the passenger seat was the driver information.

In an instant, Ye Sang Sang understood: she was a taxi driver.

Hello, player. You have entered the game. Please abide by the rules and begin the Rainy Night Taxi scenario.

Identity card drawn.

Criminal.

The three words Criminal appeared in the air for two seconds, then dispersed like mist into the atmosphere.

If not for the drifting text and the game prompt that appeared, Ye Sang Sang might have even thought she had transmigrated.

On instinct, she pressed the door switch. As the door opened, the onlookers who had already learned the scenario details fell into a frenzy.

Good heavens, the vicious killer from Rainy Night Taxi!

That young lady is doomed. The people in this scenario are ferocious as hell.

Playing the criminal’s perspective? The victim might counterkill on the spot.

This case was extremely famous, and it had caused a sensation in Jiang City that year.

Not only because the criminal was vicious enough, but because of the person he killed.

This taxi driver, on a rainy night just before getting off work, happened to pick up the deceased, Wang Shun, who was hailing a cab.

As a habitual robber who would feel like taking a knife and slaughtering even a dog he passed by, he had originally gone out intending to rob taxi drivers. In the early years of the millennium, surveillance was underdeveloped, taxi drivers often carried cash, and the car itself was valuable. So he roamed all over Jiang City, targeting drivers late at night to rob money, steal cars, and kill people while he was at it.

And this time, having chosen a taxi driver, he once again began his robbery spree.

As expected, on the rainy streets late at night, he flagged down Ye Sang Sang’s car.

With only three points of stamina, a weakling like that, even if clever, was nothing more than a chick to the audience.

He would be easily stripped of his life by the robber and would have no chance of clearing the scenario at all.

Now that Ye Sang Sang had opened the door and the other man was getting in, she was about to begin her first death challenge.

I’ll bet ten minutes before the young lady gets her throat slit.

Such a beautiful young lady will be scared into quitting on the spot! Hee hee hee.

If you can’t keep playing, I’d be willing to buy back that internal test slot at a high price. Women just aren’t suited to this kind of game.

Watching the robber open the rear door of the taxi, remove his black raincoat, and sit down inside, the comments began a torrent of mockery.

Ye Sang Sang folded the comments away and could no longer see them, but even if she could, she would not care what those people said.

Her hands rested on the steering wheel, but her eyes swept over the case introduction provided by the system.

It was very general. Aside from a biography of the taxi driver, it only included the approximate time, location, and method by which the taxi driver fought back and killed the habitual robber Wang Shun.

At the end were some photos taken during the autopsy after Wang Shun’s death, as well as the tool used for the killing.

After reading it, Ye Sang Sang turned slightly and looked at the man in the back seat. “Hello, where to?”

“Tianjiaba,” Wang Shun said in a rough voice. He drew his clothes tighter around him, covering the small knife hidden inside, and spoke to Ye Sang Sang gruffly.

Ye Sang Sang gave a quiet “Mm” and started the car.

She knew how to drive.

Even if she hadn’t, the game would make her “know how.”

She was very excited now, because she had not felt this sense of free movement for a long time.

Even though the rainwater that had been brought in when she opened the door, together with the leather smell naturally lingering in the taxi, was unpleasant, she did not feel uncomfortable at all.

As expected of a holographic game loaded with ultra-intelligence, when Ye Sang Sang was unfamiliar with the roads, it would whisper guidance in her ear about how to proceed.

On the roadside, people walked slowly under umbrellas, while streetlamps and signs cast their light over the streets.

It was so real, like an actual world.

Just like the official promotions had promised.

Still, she had not forgotten that a seasoned robber was sitting behind her.

If she slipped even slightly, he would kill her.

She had not yet tasted the flavor of death.

Out of curiosity, Ye Sang Sang glanced back at Wang Shun and said, “This late, and in such heavy rain, do you live in Tianjiaba?”

She reached out, touched the clothes on her body, then felt around the storage compartment below the car door. “I’ve run out of cigarettes, or I’d have one.”

From her observation of the body, she was currently inhabiting a male frame about one hundred and seventy-five centimeters tall, lean but still fairly strong.

Of course, that was only the appearance; what the game actually carried over was the stamina she truly possessed.

Presumably that was to raise the difficulty for the player.

Otherwise, if one knew the plot and also had stamina, it would be a complete crushing victory in every respect, and the game would lose its playability.

Inside the taxi, after Ye Sang Sang finished speaking, Wang Shun took out a cigarette, reached out, and tapped her right shoulder with it. “I’ve got one. Take it.”

Ye Sang Sang made no attempt to avoid him. While driving, she took the cigarette, tilted her head slightly, and lit it beneath the flame of the lighter he held out.