Explosive Point

As you approach the casino, you can hear the cheers of zombies rising and falling.

There were only a few scattered infrared beams in the casino at this moment. The evenly distributed gambling tables had been moved to both sides, and each table was surrounded by cheering zombies. A red carpet stretched out in the middle, leading to a gambling table at the end. Behind the gambling table sat the leader zombie on a molten iron throne. His charred and broken swallowtail was patched with playing cards, and his left eye was fitted with a roulette-shaped prosthetic eye. As soon as he saw the two appear at the door, his heart started beating.

Unable to control its hunger, the zombie lunged at the two with its limbs outstretched, only to be stopped by the decorative fences on either side.

The zombie leader chuckled wickedly, raising a moss-covered whiskey glass in salute to the two. The inconsistent text on the large screen behind him, reminiscent of a kidnapper's trick of pasting words from different newspapers, instructed them to play blackjack with the zombie leader, "Gambling Master." He warned that a heart rate increase of 21 during the game would trigger the leader's special ability—a cheating tactic that would instantly kill them. Entering the casino required playing the game; leaving required paying the same price.

Du Pianjian walked ahead, the zombie leader looking at him with his left eye. The screen behind him projected his heart rate as 60. Two alluring croupiers emerged carrying red trays; only upon closer inspection did it become clear that the red stains on the trays were old bloodstains. The croupiers knelt slightly before Du Pianjian, their disheveled makeup concealed beneath their long hair. Du Pianjian placed the freshly prepared reagent on the tray, and the zombie leader let out a "ho ho" laugh. He tore off a piece of his clothing and placed it on the tray, his long, barnacle-like fingernails lifting a corner to reveal a cream-stained diary.

Yu Zou suddenly said, "I'll do it."

Du Pianjian glanced at him and moved to the side. The leader zombie watched as Yu Zou pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him. The red heart in his left eye pulsed and changed, and the screen also showed Yu Zou's current heart rate.

The dealers stood on either side holding red trays, the ceiling flashed opening lights, and the zombies raised their arms and cheered.

A dealer in black stepped forward, took out six decks of cards from his pocket, and spread the 312 cards evenly on the gambling table. His hand, clad in a half-finger glove, swept a centimeter above the table, and with a flick of his index finger, he flipped the last card over like a domino. He shuffled the cards with one hand, creating a whirlwind, and then cut the cards in a cross pattern, creating a blur of colors that eventually converged in one place—the dealing box.

The game begins, and the revealed card is 9.

Yu Zou received a 7 of spades and a Queen of diamonds. The Queen of diamonds, bound by the squares, ultimately shot herself. With a total of seventeen points, she was only four points away from busting, meaning she could have stopped playing right at the start.

The zombie leader suddenly revealed one of his cards—the King of Hearts. The red wine glass that the king was holding up on the card was actually a sword inlaid with rubies, and he was unknowingly plunging it into his own mouth.

The waiter brought over two glasses of red wine, which the leader eagerly finished, watching with a grin as Yu Zou's heart rate rose by 10 beats per minute.

Yu Zou closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and suppressed the urge to shout: "Who plays blackjack like this?!"

He picked up the glass and drank it with him. It was absinthe, with a strong, herbal bitterness, like chewing a mouthful of star anise. His bracelet beeped, indicating that his infection level was rising. The leader zombie's left eye clicked, and the corner of his mouth turned down unnaturally, clearly dissatisfied with Yu Zou's unchanged heart rate this time.

This blackjack game clearly has special rules, and the leader zombie seems indifferent to winning or losing, but rather more interested in seeing the players' heart rates rise due to the special rules, thus triggering the leader's skills.

Revealing your hand means activating special rules. Since the King is it, the Queen could also be it. Without hesitation, Yu Zou revealed the Queen of Diamonds: the Queen of Diamonds' bullet, her virtue as sharp and dazzling as a diamond.

The zombie leader slumped onto the gambling table, the red heart on his prosthetic eye rapidly swelling, revealing an exaggerated, astonished smile. A waiter brought over two identical guns and two transparent bullets.

Both sides reloaded their guns and pointed them at each other, but unfortunately, both shots were empty.

Seeing that Yu Zou's heartbeat remained unchanged, the zombie leader's prosthetic eye blinked incessantly, and his mouth gaped open in excitement from gambling.

"I want the cards."

The dealer deals a card, and Yu Zou reveals a corner: 3 of Diamonds

The revealed cards don't disappear; they still count towards the score, and the game is only one point away from the tipping point.

"He's cheating," Yu Zou thought to himself.

His card should have been the Ace of Spades.

"Stop the game." Yu Zou pressed down on the playing card.

Three cards were pushed in front of him and then pushed away. He was waiting for the next one, and he still needed to wait for seven more cards. His clasped hands tightened, pressing out the bluish veins. The cards in the zombie leader's hand had become uncertain due to cheating, and now it was entirely a contest of luck—none of the remaining seven cards were the cards his opponent needed.

The dealer pushed the cards closer, and Du Pianjian, who had been standing beside him, suddenly put his hand on Yu Zou's shoulder and squeezed it. The squeeze was neither too light nor too heavy, just enough to interrupt Yu Zou's thought of refusing the cards.

Yu Zou looked up along the hand on his shoulder and could only see Du Pianjian's profile. The curve from his nose to his lips was seamless, and the mole under his lip looked like a mark left unintentionally by a god who was too satisfied with the stroke of ink in his painting.

Yu Zou straightened his head and said without hesitation, "I want the cards!"

The card was revealed to be the Ace of Spades, 21 points.

"Thump! Thump thump!"

The 8-bit electronic sound effect announced victory with the clinking of gold coins.

The leader zombie was pinned to its throne by an invisible recoil, all the zombies instantly pressed pause, fireworks exploded on the big screen, and words of varying sizes appeared: JACKPOT!

The small print at the bottom reads: "The stakes for winning against the leader zombie are: a sweet secret; the reward for winning is that all zombies present will be paralyzed for one minute."

The dealer walked to the table, bent down on one knee, and Yu Zou anticipated her movement. He pulled her wrist and stood up together, took the diary from the tray, and his eyebrows and eyes lit up. He asked Du Pianjian, "How did you know that was the Ace of Spades?"

“I saw him cheating,” Du Pianjian said in a low voice.

"You saw it?" Yu Zou lowered his voice, his dark pupils widening with curiosity. "How did you cheat?"

"Croupier, the cards have been changed." The third card, which was originally the Ace of Spades that Yu had requested, was moved to the back at the leader zombie's instruction.

"Wow, you're amazing." Yu Zou almost wanted to applaud him.

Du Pianjian smiled and said, "It's just a matter of luck."

"So, are we still going to bet or not?"

“Of course.” Du Pianjian pushed his chair forward, and he was almost a head away from Yu Zou. Yu Zou was sitting in a position where he couldn’t put his arm on the gambling table.

"Why do you want to win?" Yu Zou leaned against the gambling table, the edge of which cut a crease at his hip, making it look like he was sitting on it.

"No."

In less than an hour, he searched three levels and achieved a quadra kill. And he still says he doesn't want to win?

Yu Zou sensed a dangerous intrigue unfolding before him: a coffin box bound with red thread, covered with cinnabar talismans and incomprehensible symbols that simultaneously warned "Do not open" and tempted him to "Try opening it."

"Thank you for asking me to cooperate, otherwise I would have lost just now." Yu Zou drew a line across his neck with the diary.

Du Pianjian's expression turned serious, and he simply nodded.

A minute passed, the pause button was pressed, and Yu Zou left the gambling table and stood behind Du Pianjian. The leader zombie woke up and, seeing the person sitting opposite him, excitedly lay down on the gambling table, pressing his hands against his head to adjust his position, his long fingernails pinching and rotating his prosthetic eye until a red heart was beating in the prosthetic eye again.

Du Pianjian's wager was still the reagent, and the zombie leader took out a glass jar from his pocket and placed it on the tray. Inside the glass jar were eyeballs, each a different color and shape, so realistic that the red blood vessels on them were clearly visible.

Yu Zou took a deep breath, turned around and leaned back in his chair, opening his diary and deciding to concentrate on reading, since he was of no use to this bet anyway.

Du Pianjian's expression remained unchanged, and his heart rate remained as stable as ever.

The dealer's face-up card is the Jack of Spades.

The first two cards were the 6 of diamonds and the 3 of spades. Du Pianjian glanced at them and continued to draw cards.

The handwriting in the diary was childish but still legible; it was indeed C8's diary, a thin volume recording many days, each day containing only two or three lines. C8 was born at sea; his father was a cook on a yacht, responsible for handling the seafood caught by sailors. He had worked with his father since childhood. He loved sweets, but his father never allowed him to eat too much, so he only ate a small piece on payday. The storage room on the first level underwater was where he secretly ate his sweets; he had even secretly hidden a piece there.

It seems we need to go down to the next level underwater. Yu Zou thought to himself, "Three-quarters of the diary has already been read here, with only three or four pages left."

At the gambling table, Du Pianjian asked for cards again. The red heart on the leader zombie's prosthetic eye spun around, and the dealer hesitated for a moment before pushing the cards to Du Pianjian.

Du Pianjian lifted a corner of the cards, pinched one of the face-down cards between his fingers, and threw out two cards: the Queen of Spades and the Queen of Hearts.

The Queen of Hearts holds a heart in one hand and a sword in the other, as if she has ripped her own heart out. The Queen of Spades holds a spear in one hand and a bouquet of flowers in the other, with vines growing from her palm, emerging from her eyes, and entwining the spear.

Two crossed crowns burst from the large screen behind the zombies, and four large characters popped up—Gemini Queens.

Triggered to gain: The female zombie's trust.

Two waiters came out carrying red trays, each with a fist-sized red balloon, a dart, and three paper cups. The waiters placed the balloon in one of the paper cups and shuffled the order, then instructed both parties to pick up the dart at the same time and blindfolded them with a ribbon.

No… why did the difficulty suddenly spike to another level during the few minutes he was reading? Yu Zou watched as Du Pianjian raised the dart, its gleaming spike hovering steadily in the air. A second later, it shot out silently, causing a small explosion on the opposite gambling table. The cards were shaken and floated, and fragments of balloons and paper cups scattered in all directions.

Just watching it made Yu Zou's heart rate spike. Meanwhile, on the large screen opposite him, the numbers remained as steady as if they were dead.

The waiter removed the ribbon from Du Pianjian's face. Du Pianjian slowly opened her closed eyes, her first glance falling on the paper cup in front of her. The dart struck the leftmost cup. Only then did she look across to the other side, where the leader zombie lay on his throne, a red disc hanging from his protruding mechanical eye, the red heart already extinguished.

In an instant, Du Pianjian leaped onto the card table, ripped off the leader zombie's prosthetic eye, and then dragged the bewildered Yu Zou away. The zombie leader immediately awoke, letting out an angry shriek. The railing was pushed over, and the sea of ​​zombies was about to engulf the two of them. The leading zombie's outstretched claws were about to touch Du Pianjian's clothes when a female zombie pulled her back sharply.

An internal conflict broke out among the zombies. The female zombies were holding them off as the two rushed out of the casino and ran towards the stairwell until they were sure the zombies wouldn't catch up.

Du Pianjian handed him what he was holding, and Yu Zou took it; it was a scope.

Yu Zou weighed it in his palm, choosing curiosity over fleeing for his life: "How did you know?"

"There are gambling diaries of the crew members on the first underwater level."

"So you were planning to get two Queens from the start?" This was why Du Pianjian kept asking for cards. Yu Zou's heart pounded, even faster than when he was running away. "So you..."

Du Pianjian curled up the corners of her mouth, her lips like honey-coated blades, the curve just enough to pierce one's heart: "It's been going to explode for a long time."