“Ah, my book!”

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With superhuman speed, the little girl runs to Tang Mo and grabs the book, holding the giant match in her left hand and the book in her right hand. After confirming that it’s her previously-lost book, she runs to sit beside the bookshelf and begins to read.

“Mama is going to test me on this book tomorrow, I have to hurry and read it.”

The sound of pages flipping resonates loudly in the large and spacious library.

At this moment, Weirdo’s face loses all its color. His lips turn blue, and he stares at Pixels and the book in her hand. In just a few minutes, his hair becomes drenched in sweat as if he had just come out of a pool. He smiles bitterly at Tang Mo. “So it was this book. When did you realize?”

Tang Mo looks at Weirdo’s right hand. There, on the back of his hand, the white angel’s wings gradually turn black, turning into a pair of demon’s wings.

Tang Mo’s voice is very calm. “From the moment I saw you.”

Weirdo’s eyes widen in disbelief. “Impossible!”

The little girl is still reading as if she can’t hear them. The game has now ended, so Tang Mo and Weirdo walk to the reading section and sit down at a table.

Tang Mo raises his head to look at the faraway Pixels. She is perhaps the only person who’s still in the mood to read in this entire library. Weirdo has dropped the nervousness and fear that he exhibited before. He sits across from Tang Mo and begins to tell the truth. “I was the one who pulled you into this game.”

This comes as a surprise to Tang Mo.

Weirdo says, “Me being in the library was an accident. I came in before you did. You know, a lot of us unemployed people will come here to waste time, and when the library closes, the security guards have to find us and kick us out. But security guards make mistakes too. Your library is too close to that tower, so when it said ‘the Earth is online’, I chose to stay and observe it. Then on the third day, when I was reading, I accidentally heard it talk.”

Weirdo raises his head, earnest fanaticism shining in his eyes. He doesn’t seem to be looking at Tang Mo, but at some glorious entity beyond.

“It said to me, the game is about to begin.” Weirdo looks lovingly at the air and repeats, “It selected me!”

Tang Mo doesn’t respond.

Weirdo is just a religious fanatic, not an actual psycho—every library employee knows this—so a while later, Weirdo calms down, normal again except for an odd flush on his face. He says, “The game it chose for me was a 1v1 confrontation game. I couldn’t complete it on my own and was considering leaving the library to find someone to start the game when you came in. We know each other, sort of. I thought about it and purposely made noise to lure you over. Now that I think about it, it was the worst decision I’ve ever made.”

Tang Mo asks, “What’s the punishment for losing the game? What’s elimination?”

Weirdo shakes his head. “I don’t know, it didn’t tell me. The voice I heard and the voice you heard was the same. It never says anything unnecessary. It told me, I can choose my opponent, but my opponent has to choose the game. That’s only what’s fair. Before the game began, I didn’t know that we would be looking for a book. Maybe it’s because you’re a librarian and the game fits your career.” Here, Weirdo pauses, looking at Tang Mo earnestly. “How did you know it was me?”

It was actually very easy. Tang Mo says, “You’re not crazy, nor are you stupid. Your reason for sneaking into the library didn’t hold up, and afterwards, you seemed to be extremely fearful and afraid. Weir—Mr. Chen, I also know a religious fanatic. Three days ago, if that person said to me, ‘The Black Tower is a god’, then I believe that if three days later, he was chosen by the Black Tower to start a game, he would not be terrified but instead delighted.”

Weirdo’s tense body slumps and hits the back of the chair heavily. “So it was like that…”

Tang Mo: “It was only a suspicion. I couldn’t be sure if you were like Ye Gong Who Loved Dragons[1] and actually a coward.”

“Then how did you know it was me?”

“Because the game has to be fair.”

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Weirdo looks quizzically at Tang Mo.

Tang Mo touches the angel wings on the back of his hand. “I like to play games. The game I play most often can be considered the most fair of all card games. For some games, technique wins over luck. For example, bridge, which I play a lot. But luck can also win over technique, like in five card stud[2]. But these games have one thing in common, which is that both sides are equal. After the game starts, luck is also a type of strength. For both parties, no matter whose luck is better or worse, it’s still a difference in strength. The game itself is fair.”

Weirdo understands now. “But does this have anything to do with our game?”

Tang Mo raises his head. “Don’t you think this game is very unfair?”

“What?”

“There are only three rules. Number one, no violence. This is a meaningful rule, but we’ll skip it for now. Number two, the angel can get a hint during the day. Number three, the demon can destroy a bookshelf during the night. It seems like the angel has to find one book out of millions, which is very difficult. On the other hand, the demon has a three in twenty-three chance[3] of winning the game.”

Weirdo suddenly realizes. “You’re saying the game’s unfair to the angel?”

“No.” Tang Mo shakes his head with a smile. “It’s unfair to the demon.”

Weirdo is completely baffled.

“For the angel, this game has a solution. He just needs to follow the hints to find the book. But for the demon, he can only do one thing, and that is burn books. No one’s giving him any hints or telling him where the book is. Under these circumstances, the game becomes this—the angel is playing a puzzle game, and the demon is purely gambling. The angel can use technique and luck to win, but the demon can only rely on luck.”

Weirdo argues, “But the angel has a much lower chance of finding the book than the demon.”

“I already said that after the game starts, luck is also a type of strength. As long as he hasn’t burned the right book, the demon’s luck is 0, the same as the angel. There’s also the rule of ‘no violence’, which totally kills any chance of the demon forcibly getting any hints. So then the demon has to get his hints from somewhere else.”

Weirdo doesn’t say anything. His face turns pale, then green[4], and after a long time, he sighs, smiling in resignation. “I don’t have much experience with games. Tang Mo, is bridge fun? Maybe I should play it sometime.”

“If we have a chance in the future, I’ll play with you,” Tang Mo says.

Weirdo nods with a smile.

Slowly, Tang Mo’s eyes narrow. “Maybe, if I was playing with him, the ending of this game would be totally different.”

“Who’s him?”

Tang Mo smiles. “Someone I play bridge with often. He’s very good. If it was him, he definitely would have realized all the things I did, and then deceived me with a perfect excuse. At the very least, he wouldn’t have made all your mistakes.”

Instead of being embarrassed, Weirdo humbly asks for advice. “I made mistakes? I thought I acted pretty well. When I saw you, I was afraid you’d notice the holes in my story so I acted scared. Then I tried not to talk or do anything on my own, only doing what you told me to.”

“You still made mistakes. For instance, when I said there’s no one else in the library other than us and we don’t know where the demon is, you said ‘he’s hiding’. A normal person, since the angel team is us two, would unconsciously believe that the demon team also had two people. Hence ‘they’, not ‘he’.”

The corner of Weirdo’s mouth twitches. “I am suddenly very interested in bridge.”

“I thought I could expose you the first night, but then the bookshelf suddenly started burning. I thought you had companions, but that wasn’t realistic. If there were two demons and only one angel, that would be unfair to the angel.” Unless the Black Tower thought that I could hold my own against the two of you combined[5].

Tang Mo coughs, keeping the last thought to himself. “During the second day, I kept wondering who helped you light the fire. There were only two answers. One was that you didn’t need anyone else and could light a fire just by thinking about it. The second was that someone was helping you. The only people to appear in this library were you, me, and the little girl. Other than the Black Tower, the only person who could have helped you was her.”

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Weirdo says, “But I don’t even know how she helped me light the fires.”

“That’s understandable. Did you forget? The little girl hates reading. If you wanted to burn a bookshelf, she’d be more than happy to help you. This is a fairly reasonable explanation. Conveniently, when she ran over just now, I looked at her hair, and unfortunately, the ends were a bit singed. Maybe it was from when she lit the fires before.”

Weirdo collapses in his chair. “I lost fair and square.”

Tang Mo was going to say more, but after seeing Weirdo like this, he shakes his head with a smile and stops talking.

There were a lot of other things that Weirdo didn’t pick up on, like how Tang Mo tested Weirdo and misdirected him to burn the H shelf, or like the little girl’s third hint that exposed Weirdo’s true identity.

Those three hints were pretty useless, but they led to three conclusions.

Number one, the demon is deceptive.

This is a hint for the angel: the demon is hiding himself, and he is right beside you.

Number two, the angel knows this book.

This hint seems totally useless; Tang Mo knows way too many books. Even the ones he can name off the top of his head, he can think of at least a few hundred.

Number three, the demon knows this book.

This is a book that both Tang Mo and Weirdo know.

That’s still a very large range.

Weirdo’s been coming to the library for a year. The books that both he and Tang Mo know must be in the thousands. The game cannot be that hard. If the game was unable to be won, then it wouldn’t have begun in the first place and the Black Tower would have just directly eliminated two players. Hence, the answer must be a book that both Tang Mo and Weirdo would be able to think of.

Tang Mo’s first instinct was The Secret of the Disappearance of the Mayan Civilization.

This is a book that he and Weirdo talked about before the Black Tower Incident. If it’s a book that they both know and have strong impressions of, then it’s got to be this one.

Weirdo’s definitely not dumb. Under the conditions of suddenly having to play a game, if he could immediately think of acting and act his part well, then he’s actually very impressive.

Suddenly, a thought occurs to Tang Mo; if it was Victor, he would have probably taken the initiative right at the start of the game. Victor wouldn’t be like Weirdo and let himself be at a disadvantage. Weirdo acting weak was to try to make Tang Mo ignore him, but this way, he also lost the chance to confuse Tang Mo’s thought process and mislead him.

If it was Victor, what would he do…?

---[6]

At the same time, in the faraway capital, a tall, handsome man wearing a military uniform walks briskly into the meeting room. He pulls out a chair and sits at the far corner of the table, gaze hawklike as he watches the scientists present their findings on the large screen.

“Three days ago, the Black Tower was in a virtual state, called a Type-A Mirage. In the past half-year, we’ve done various experiments to test the data associated with the Black Tower…”

The scientists discuss the issue passionately in the meeting room. Finally, the chief officer says, voice loud and clear, “So, today is the third day. What conclusions have you come to?”

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All the scientists fall silent.

As the lowest-ranked military official in the room, Fu Wenduo silently moves his gaze away to look out the window.

In the pitch-black night, there is a huge black tower, as sharp as a knife, hanging above the 21,720,000 people of Beijing.

Right now, it is November 18th, 2017, 03:42. There are only four hours and eighteen minutes until the end of the three-day elimination period.

---

In the library, Weirdo sits in the chair, sweating. He says he’s not nervous, but his trembling lips betray the fear in his heart. Right now, no one knows what ‘elimination’ means. Maybe it just means losing a game, or maybe it means losing something more.

At this moment, footsteps come from deep within the bookshelves.

Pixels holds the book, skipping over to Tang Mo. Her two pigtails make beautiful arcs in the air as she puffs out her chest, joy evident in her voice, and she suddenly holds out her hand, sticking the giant match in front of Tang Mo’s face.

“You really know your stuff, huh? Well, since you helped me find my book, I’ll give this to you.”

Tang Mo doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He takes the match, unconsciously asking, “The little matchgirl?”

In an instant, a gap appears in the pixelation on the little girl’s face. Tang Mo’s eyes widen. He sees that, at the location of the little girl’s eyes, the pixelation has disappeared, revealing a pair of big and spiritless dead-fish eyes[7]. The rest of her face is still pixelated, but she’s revealed her eyes!

Tang Mo holds his breath, cautiously watching this odd change.
​
Those dead-fish eyes glance at Tang Mo spiritlessly, a physical manifestation of contempt.

“Uncle, have you not grown up yet? Have you seen such a cute matchgirl?”

Tang Mo, who’s turned from a gege to an uncle: “...”

So you took away the pixelation just to give me a contemptuous look?!

Notes

[1]	Ye Gong Who Loves Dragons, or 叶公好龙, is a Chinese idiom meaning 'someone who says they love something but actually don't'. You can read the story here.

[2]	Five card stud is a variation of poker. You can read the wikipedia page here. Sponsored Content

[3]	As I said in the previous chapter, if my math is correct, the probability of the demon burning the right book is not 3/23. It would only be 3/23 if the demon burned three bookshelves at once.

[4]	In Chinese, when someone's face turns green, it means that they've heard some really bad news and are very upset. A lot of the times, I see it used in regards to anger.

[5]	The original text here was something like "Unless the Black Tower thought that you two combined were on the same level as me" but for some reason, that didn't sound right to me so I changed it.

[6]	Originally, there were no section breaks, but I found that adding them in helped with clarity.

[7]	'Dead fish eyes' is a phrase in Chinese that's used to describe a sort of unamused face. If you've ever seen Levi from Attack on Titan, it's the expression that he usually has on. Some more examples include Diluc from Genshin Impact, Zhou Zhennan from R1SE, and Gintoki from Gintama.

Translator's Notes:
​
I have realized recently that I've been editing out a lot more useless phrases, or changing words around without changing the general meaning of the sentence. I used to put footnotes in for everything I changed, but I have decided now that I will only use footnotes for the big things since weebly is very unfriendly with footnotes.

Tl;dr: Expect less footnotes because I will no longer be noting every little detail that I changed.

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