Chapter 692: The Cooperation Collapses

Lu Bingjun paused briefly and continued, "Within the community, we would sometimes play card games as a way to pass the time and prepare for whatever might come, but Gao Teng never joined in.

"And in 'Tile Poker,' he was almost entirely passive throughout the whole game. The other three players basically carried him to the win.

"Some people at the time mistakenly wrote him off as useless, but looking at the abilities he demonstrated afterward, it seemed more like a specific kind of PTSD, a serious trauma response to anything involving cards or gambling.

"That's roughly the full picture."

Huang Shengjie looked mildly surprised, "Wei Changfeng and Xu Yili were actually a couple?"

Lu Bingjun explained, "It's genuinely not very common in a community setting.

"After all, in a place like this where tomorrow is never guaranteed and death can come at any time, most people aren't really in the headspace for romance.

"The stronger players tend to be focused on improving themselves and preparing for the next game. The weaker ones are often too busy worrying about survival to think about much else.

"But this kind of environment can actually trigger what you might call a suspension bridge effect. People who feel something for each other will still find themselves drawn together.

"Wei Changfeng and Xu Yili were both relatively mature personalities and close in age. It wasn't surprising that they developed feelings for each other."

Qin Cheng's brow furrowed slightly, "That gives me a bad feeling about where this is going.

"From what we've observed, couples forming in a community are genuinely unusual.

"Because in the vast majority of cases, emotional attachment tends to make people vulnerable, and can plant seeds of serious problems down the line.

"Many strong players who might want companionship find it very easy to pursue, but it can easily destabilise a community or even lead to a collapse in the middle of a game.

"Many companies have policies against office relationships for exactly the same reason.

"And Gao Teng showing such a pronounced trauma response to cards and gambling, combined with being compulsorily selected into a gambling-related Judgment Game, those two things together suggest he was likely once a gambler who paid a devastating price for it. His disability may even be connected to that.

"If his legs had been disabled since childhood, he would probably have been more at peace with it by now.

"The state he was in reads more like someone who was once healthy, suffered a sudden catastrophe, and lost the use of his legs, which would explain the despair about everything.

"We're getting off track. Let's come back to the game.

"My guess is that Gao Teng had fallen deep into gambling and paid an extremely heavy price. That price might have been money, might have been his legs, or might even have been someone he loved.

"So he would carry a profound hatred for everything connected to the gambling world, and cheats in particular.

"Of course, he also hated himself.

"The game never disclosed either player's offence, so Zheng Qingyun and Gao Teng knew nothing about each other's backgrounds.

"Zheng Qingyun assumed that because of how the game's mechanics worked, his cheating would almost certainly go undetected.

"And even if it was detected, it didn't matter too much, because the other side would also be afraid of dying. The most he'd have to do was give them a few extra round wins to close the gap.

"They'd be unlikely to throw their lives away over it.

"As a cheat, he fell into his own habitual thinking and tried his luck.

"But he overlooked one thing: Gao Teng's hatred of cheats was carved into his very bones."

Huang Shengjie swallowed quietly. He could almost see the scene playing out.

Round 18 begins.

The score has reached 9 round wins to 8, with Community 2 leading by one.

In the preceding rounds, Zheng Qingyun has been honouring his word, deliberately selecting the insincere option each time to deduct points from his own side's hand.

Community 2's luck had also been good, stringing together four consecutive round wins.

In fact, the previous round had already brought the two sides level, but Zheng Qingyun had said nothing and silently allowed Community 2 to take one more hit and pull ahead by one.

After all, he had been the first to bend the rules, and it had been agreed that this compensation was owed.

Across those four rounds, Wei Changfeng had taken two hits, and Gao Teng and Xu Yili had each taken one.

Every hit required a confession, so they had each absorbed additional penalty counts.

But in this round, Community 2 had no justification whatsoever to take any further hits.

In Round 1, the player to Zheng Qingyun's right had dealt first. From there the rotation had shifted clockwise with each successive round.

By this round, the dealing rotation had come around to Wei Changfeng.

Following the clockwise order, the three Community 6 players would go next, followed by Xu Yili and then Gao Teng.

"Stand."

"Stand."

Starting from Wei Changfeng, the other five players each declared stand in turn, honouring the agreement.

But when it came to Gao Teng, he did not stand.

Wei Changfeng felt a sudden unease. He looked quickly at Gao Teng and found him staring fixedly at Zheng Qingyun, then heard him speak slowly.

"Hit.

"My confession is this: my disability, the loss of feeling in my legs, came from being beaten after I argued with a cheat following a losing session at an underground casino."

The moment the confession was spoken, the hit took effect. The machine produced one more card, which slid down the chute to his side.

At the same time, the response buttons were activated at the positions of the three Community 6 players. They were required to choose their reaction to the confession: 'Shocked' or 'Unmoved.'

They had performed this operation four times already and were completely familiar with it.

But it was obvious to everyone that this time was entirely different from all the others.

Because Community 2's round win count had already pulled ahead, and Gao Teng's action amounted to tearing up the cooperation agreement.

And the content of this confession was not trivial.

In the previous four confessions, Wei Changfeng, Gao Teng, and Xu Yili had all spoken about inconsequential things: not studying hard as a child, stealing a toy from a neighbour's house when young, saying unkind things about a friend behind their back.

For Zheng Qingyun and the other two players, their genuine response to those confessions would have been 'Unmoved.'

Under the game's rules, the resulting point modifications were:

Unmoved adds 4 points. Shocked deducts 12 points. Insincere Unmoved adds 12 points. Insincere Shocked deducts 4 points.

By deliberately pressing 'Shocked,' they could reduce their own total by 4 points, which was roughly enough to ensure Community 2 won that round.

But this time, Gao Teng's confession was no longer a harmless small thing. Zheng Qingyun and the others' genuine reaction would have been 'Shocked.'

If they pressed 'Unmoved,' the insincere choice would add 12 points to their hand.

If they pressed 'Shocked,' it would deduct 12 points from their hand.