[1]
Zhao Chen thought a moment and said, "No matter; a little girl can't hurt me. Didn't you find no weapons of any kind on her either? Besides, I'm carrying our Fierce Dragon Kingdom's safest personal star-shield device; even if a nuke went off beside me, I'd survive. I'm rather interested in this little girl, actually; I keep feeling I've seen her somewhere. Keep following, but don't let slip what we already know."
"Yes!" the guard nodded beside him.
Zhao Chen walked back and sat in the vehicle again.
There was a great deal of room in the vehicle:
the Nancy Empress, Huang Min and her daughter, Jiang Yumeng and her "sister," and Annie, who had come along with Zhao Chen.
Annie had at last found a chance to slack off and rest; how could she let it slip?
The vehicle started, and before long
they reached a villa rental the Nancy Empress had arranged.
This rental was in effect a small villa, a very costly thing within the Dragon Palace Starport.
But this costliness was naturally nothing to the Nancy Empress.
They walked into the villa.
There was a swimming pool, a little courtyard, and beside the courtyard a big living room.
In the big living room every kind of snack had been laid out, and things to play with.
"Wow, there are even the newest games!" Annie's eyes lit up at the sight of the game console.
Though these games, to Annie, counted in a sense as antiques,
to a gamer there are no outdated games, only the classics.
So long as she liked it, even the oldest flat game she found great fun.
"Big brother, let's play a game!" Huang Nannan said excitedly.
"Sure."
"Let's play this horror zombie shooter. It has a holographic simulation mode!" Huang Nannan pointed excitedly at a game disc.
"Horror zombies?" Zhao Chen could not help looking at the youngest, Huang Nannan and Nannan: "Won't this be a bit too intense for you two? Don't end up unable to sleep tonight after playing."
Huang Nannan threw out her chest proudly and said, "Big brother, you don't know. At our school I'm the bravest. What I like best is horror stuff like this. I usually get my mommy to watch horror films with me. But she can't watch anything too scary; as soon as it's really scary, she has to hug me."
Huang Min beside them looked resigned; she did not explain either, but said, "I don't know how this girl was raised as a little one. She actually likes every kind of horror film, and used to drag me to watch with her. It scared me half to death. If she wants to play, I don't mind. But can Nannan play?"
Huang Min was somewhat worried about that well-behaved child.
Nannan nodded and said, "I can."
"In that case, we'll all play together." Zhao Chen's gaze fell on Annie beside him, who was quietly getting ready to back away.
That Annie was a gamer Zhao Chen knew; Zhao Chen had seen where she lived too.
It could be said to hold every kind of game.
But she had one forbidden zone, and that was horror games.
She collected some horror games too, but only collected them and did not play them, for she truly did not dare.
"Our Annie is a very formidable game master. She loves playing games best of all. Let Master Annie lead us in playing, shall we?" Zhao Chen said with a smile, pointing at Annie.
"Really? Big sister Annie loves playing games too!" Huang Nannan looked at Annie, full of worship.
Annie, hearing the voice praising her, at once raised her head and said, "Of course; there's no game in this world I don't play. Don't worry; this big shot will carry you!"
"Aaaah… why is there a bug over here!"
"Aaah… what a huge spider."
"Help, help, this thing's crawled onto my leg."
Ten-odd minutes later, Annie's screams could be heard all through the villa.
Everyone present was wearing a VR headset.
The guard beside them watched the holographic projection before her, in which the content of this zombie horror game could be seen.
This game was in fact very simple.
It told the story of a squad going into a city turned zombie.
But these were no simple zombies; many horror elements had been added to them,
such as zombified spiders, animals, even ghostlike creatures.
She had heard that this game had been the top-ranked horror game on Dragon Star last year.
In the game, several people would form a squad and then complete missions one by one.
Among these several people,
Nannan was the calmest and steadiest, and her play was the best.
Her score was the best of them too.
Huang Nannan's score was a little worse, but she was not afraid; rather, she was curious and excited about everything.
The Nancy Empress and Huang Min were alike; at some especially frightening moments they would jump too, but most of the time they were all right.
Zhao Chen faced it all with an even mind; his score could count as above average.
As for Jiang Yumeng, she did not do very well; she was afraid of this sort of thing too.
But fortunately there was someone present propping up the bottom for her:
Annie, lying on the floor at this moment, hugging Zhao Chen's leg.
Annie was nearly in tears now.
"Mamma mia. Why is everything chasing me; don't chase me! Help me! I want to go home!" Annie did not have the least air of a chief engineer now; she was like a little child scared out of her wits.
They played for about an hour.
This game came to an end for now, not, of course, because they had beaten it,
but because Zhao Chen worried that if a certain someone kept screaming like this, her voice would probably be gone tomorrow.
"Isn't a certain someone very good at games? Why is her score the worst instead?" Zhao Chen teased, looking at Annie, who sat there with her helmet off, looking as if she could not believe she was still alive.
Annie said stubbornly, "That was only an accident; this game's a bit scary, and I got frightened. So I played below my form. If it were any other game, I'd have no problem at all!"
"Then let's play cards!" Huang Nannan proposed another game.
As she spoke, she took out a deck of cards.
"This is a fairly famous board game, called Skull King.[2] In this game there are color cards, trump cards and character cards. The color cards come in three colors, red, green and yellow; each round every player plays one card; if the lead player plays a color card, then in this round the other players, if they have that color, must play that color; the color cards run from one to fourteen, one of each in the deck. If you don't have the current color, you can play another color, but cards of other colors can't win even if their number is higher. The trump cards are also called black cards, because they're black. If there's a black card in this trick, then the black card can ignore the color rule to win, but it can't ignore the color rule to be played. Say the first player plays a yellow card; if the second player has a yellow card in hand, they can't play a black trump; if they have no yellow card, then they can play a black trump. In that case, even a yellow 14 isn't as big as a black trump 1. Last are the character cards. There are six kinds of character cards. First the first three: one Skull King, two mermaids, five pirates. In a trick, the pirate beats the mermaid, the mermaid beats the Skull King, the Skull King beats the pirate, and when that happens there are bonus points too. A colored 14 gets ten extra points. A black 14 gets twenty extra. A pirate capturing a mermaid gets twenty. The Skull King capturing a pirate gets thirty. A mermaid capturing the Skull King gets forty. Also, if several pirates come out, the first pirate played wins. If all three kinds of character card come out in the same trick, the mermaid wins. Besides that, there's a character card called the white flag, which means I do nothing this trick; I give up. This one's called the octopus card, which means this trick is destroyed outright and doesn't count toward the score. This one's called the white whale; the white whale means that in this trick, whatever the type of card, only the number counts, and all the character cards count as one. If an octopus or a white whale comes out in a trick, the later one played decides it. The game has ten rounds. Each round deals a different number of cards depending on the round, so the first round is one card, the third round is three cards, the tenth round is ten cards. And say in the tenth round each player has ten cards, then that round has ten tricks. At the start of the game, each of us players has to guess how many tricks we'll take this round. Taking means I won that trick, and that counts as one; then for the next trick I'm the lead player. Like in the tenth round, if I guess I can win three, and I guess right, each one is twenty points, so sixty points. If I don't get three, but two or four, then for each trick I miss my guess by, ten points off. And in the game you can also guess zero. Zero is scored rather specially: guess right, and it's the round number times ten, so the third round is thirty points and the tenth round a hundred. But if you guess zero wrong, you lose the corresponding points! Has everyone understood? If anything's still unclear, you can ask me!" Huang Nannan explained the whole set of rules very earnestly.
The Nancy Empress glanced at this goddaughter of hers.
These rules were fairly simple, but that a child of five or six could explain them so clearly was something she had truly not expected.
No wonder her goddaughter was so clever.
"Then shouldn't we add a little penalty to the game?" Zhao Chen suddenly asked.
A penalty?
Everyone thought about it.
"My suggestion is this. There are seven of us playing now. Then when the time comes, the player at the bottom of the scores has to let those ahead doodle on her face. First place can draw seven centimeters with the pen, second place six centimeters, and so on. And the picture this pen draws will stay for a day; no water at all can wash it off, and the length drawn can be limited too: once it reaches the set length, no more ink comes out. But it does the body no harm whatsoever." Zhao Chen put forward the penalty rules.
"No problem!" Annie said, swearing it would be fine; this pen was a little toy she had invented herself.
"Then let the game begin," Zhao Chen said with a grin.
Everyone sat together in a circle.
In the first round, each person had only one card in hand.
So the guess could only be 0 or 1.
Annie glanced at the card in her hand, and the corners of her mouth could not help turning up.
What she held was a pirate.
Then hadn't she won for sure?
"Three, two, one, everyone show your guess together,"
Zhao Chen said.
The countdown ended, and everyone showed their guesses.
Most were 0.
Only Annie and Zhao Chen had guessed 1.
Annie glanced at Zhao Chen: you little punk, this young lady's holding a pirate; you think you can beat me!
And I play before you too; even if you have a pirate as well, don't even think of beating me.
With this thought in mind,
starting from the lead player, everyone played their cards in turn.
"Pirate!" Annie played her card with a cheerful grin.
The next, Zhao Chen, played his card: "Skull King."
In that instant the smile on Annie's face froze.
This round, everyone but Annie guessed right.
Zhao Chen led the scores, and with an extra thirty for capturing a pirate, led with a total of fifty points.
Annie was at −10.
The second round, the cards were shuffled and dealt.
Everyone gradually got the hang of the rules.
But Annie's score never rose above 0 from start to finish.
And the lower Annie's score went, the plainer it was that she loved a gamble; several times she guessed zero.
Above all in the last round.
Annie's score at this moment was exactly 0.
Though she was already out of the running for first place,
so long as she could score this round, there was still hope of climbing ahead.
The one just above her, Jiang Yumeng, had only fifty.
Annie glanced at the ten cards in her hand.
No character cards, no black cards.
All ordinary color cards.
That being so, she could perfectly well guess zero.
Guess zero this round, and so long as she guessed right in the end, she would gain a hundred points and have a chance of passing Jiang Yumeng.
The corners of Annie's mouth could not help turning up.
She had already worked it all out.
The game soon began.
Annie showed her zero.
Zhao Chen, sitting beside her, glanced at it on the sly.
Then came the normal stage of playing cards.
At first Annie truly did play several cards smoothly, still taking nothing, keeping her 0 safe.
"Pirate."
"Pirate."
"Skull King."
This trick brought out many big cards; before Annie came character cards.
And Annie, second to last in this trick, prepared to get rid of the biggest-numbered card in her hand:
a yellow thirteen.
Under the present rules, this card naturally could not compare with those character cards.
A smile rose on Annie's face; once this thirteen was gone, the cards left in her hand would all be very small.
Safe for sure.
But then Zhao Chen, sitting beside her, played a card:
the white whale!
At this moment the smile vanished from Annie's face.
The white whale: in this trick only the numbers counted.
And now the biggest number on the table was, of all things, the thirteen Annie had played.
Smiles never vanish; they only move.
Annie turned her head and saw the mocking smile on Zhao Chen's face.
At this moment Annie truly wanted to pounce on him and bite this bastard to death!