novelThird Elimination Match
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Chapter Chapter 59.1 - Third Elimination Match translator: xiin editors: apricot & juurensha
There was the sound of a door closing.
Wu Jin opened up his terminal in a daze. Caesar's avatar flashed and beeped, and the documents transferred over like snowflakes swirling in a blizzard.
~Sniper Training Research Report Part 1 - Phantom Caesar Edition. szip~
In the preview for the compressed folder were hundreds of categories divided up neatly, and Caesar's exclusive private assessment was also included. It had clearly been put together with more effort than how Caesar sorted out his notes after class.
The current file popped up automatically.
~Southern Cross Cat-Ear Temptation~, a same-sex series was currently transferring.
Wu Jin: "... !!!"
The network speed for the Crosson dorms was very fast. On the second day of their return after the holiday, most trainees were busy memorizing the tarot cards, and nobody had thought that there would be a huge data transfer taking place in the South Tower's dormitory 701.
Only Thin Fire, who was live-streaming from the bedroom next door, was affected--he clutched at the microphone and explained, "It's not that the host isn't speaking; the host has already called out your names! It's the live-stream that's stuck, it's stuck! Can you hear me? Can my darlings hear me? Is room management present? Room managers, where are the room managers--!!"
One wall away.
As all the file transfers completed, Caesar's evaluations were all loaded in one by one. According to him, "It wasn't that stimulating."
~Leather and Uniforms - Domineering Commander and Witty Deputy~
Caesar: "Pointless."
~Cowboy Brokeback - Dreaming of 1789~
Caesar: "No fun at all."
The later comments were almost all the same: "Boring", "No good", "What kind of thing is this?!", "Holy shit, a fake woman 666!", "This is pointless too".
"......" Wu Jin's gaze hovered over the terminal cursor. It was impossible for him to say that he wasn't curious.
Regarding these same-sex short films, or rather the future holographic version, with interstellar background settings--he hesitated slightly, then finally clicked on ~Leather and Uniforms - Domineering Commander and Witty Deputy~, which had a top 5% rating online.
The holographic scene suddenly changed.
Officer A, dressed in a rough mercenary uniform, was flirting with Deputy B as the two men slowly walked toward the shooting shed. Officer A began to take off his first piece of clothing, and Deputy B's eyes started to shine. By the time Officer A started on his second piece of clothing, Deputy B was already short of breath.
Wu Jin's eyes were wide and round, and his face was full of curiosity.
Officer A: "I'm going to press you up against the glass wall, so that anyone passing by here can see what you look like when you XX."
Deputy B's eyes lit up, "... If it's you, then I can I can only say that it would be a great honor..."
Wu Jin looked on dully: "......"
Officer A stripped down until he was only wearing a pair of underpants and began to grease up Deputy B.
Wu Jin thought of the half-eaten savory scallion pancake that he'd brought back after dinner.
Officer A smiled for the camera and finally decided to take off his last piece of clothing&#k2013;&#k2013;
Wu Jin couldn't bear it anymore and quickly turned off the short film before the important parts were revealed.
His cursor dropped down to the bottom of the video where all sorts of comments associated with the film were collected together.
"Uniform play + shame play, full score!", "Their bodies, 666!", "Wonderful lens angle!"
Wu Jin almost started to feel that there was something wrong with his own aesthetic. The people in the film were obviously not good-looking, and the male lead actor could only be considered passable.
As far as their figures were concerned, it was nowhere near as good as big brother's!
The same went for their military wear, uniforms, and the leather--the difference was clear as night and day when they were compared with the real thing!
The little rabbit inside his heart puffed up its chest where nobody else could see.
While thinking this, Wu Jin had already filtered out the exaggerated reviews that praised the lead character and scrolled down all the way to the end. A screenshot leaped out.
The officer and the deputy were both wrapped in bath towels as they kissed each other in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass.
Wu Jin stared at it for a few seconds before finally coming to his senses. He was flustered as he closed the page.
Unlike the explicit video from earlier, this screenshot was more tender and warm. The officer had pushed the other person into the corner, and the deputy's expression was full of enjoyment...
The tips of Wu Jin's ears unconsciously turned red. It was just a static image, but it seemed to have subverted his view of the world completely.
So that's how it could work--
Wait a minute. It was now 3018. Gay marriage was legal! He had to look at it from a normal point of view--
A thought seemed to flash through his mind, but was quickly suppressed. The flush behind his ears spread slightly, and Wu Jin set down the terminal in order to rub his face.
There was a slight movement from behind him. Wu Jin looked back and found that Brother Rabbit was also watching on blankly.
Wu Jin immediately grew nervous.
The big boss had said before that the rabbit was still young, and he couldn't corrupt the rabbit--
Wu Jin swooped over and turned the rabbit to face another direction, then covered his eyes with a guilty heart, "Brother Rabbit... about that, I, I was just taking a look... don't follow me and watch too..."
The rabbit rubbed itself against Wu Jin's palm.
The soft rabbit fur finally allowed reason to return, and Wu Jin suddenly realized that he'd practically turned stupid--
It wasn't as though Brother Rabbit was watching rabbit films!
However, this was still the big boss's royal watch rabbit. It felt as though he could see the big boss's unfathomable eyes through the two watery orbs--
Wu Jin coughed lightly and turned the rabbit that he'd turned to face the wall back towards him, then educated it critically, "You're still young, so you shouldn't follow suit and watch this stuff in the future! You're also not allowed to watch with Caesar when he borrows you and takes you away! Don't listen either--just stick your rabbit ears against the wall, okay?!"
Brother Rabbit rubbed against him again.
Wu Jin finally relaxed and picked up the rabbit, rubbing it against his chin, "Be good, I'll find you a beautiful little white rabbit partner in the future!"
When he opened up the terminal again, Wu Jin was about to delete the short films all together--but he then felt embarrassed and awkward about wasting Caesar's hard work and ultimately zipped them all back up and tossed it into the very bottom of the folder.
A summer breeze blew into the bedroom. The youth let out a sigh of relief and cut back to the search engine results.
After typing in the keywords "R-Code, MHCC mind calming agent", two news articles--or rather, two old articles dated six years back, were pulled up by the search engine.
Wu Jin narrowed his eyes and quickly scanned through the limited information.
One was from certain free journal, XX July 3012, Edition C, page 3--
"... the MHCC mind calming agent is an important supplement for genetically modified human beings to maintain vital functions."
"After the trade wars began, the pharmaceutical company Imperial Skylark Pharmaceuticals raised the price of monopolized drugs by 58 times while simultaneously restricting the export of Federation drugs. The technical barriers for genetic modification around MHCC became a huge rift between the Federation and the Empire."
"On July 16, Federal R-Code Entertainment announced that it could no longer afford the price of the drug and stopped the supply of select drugs to genetically modified humans, prompting strong criticism from human rights organizations..."
Another entry was from a small website with an unknown host IP--
"As of September 3013, the Federation has officially announced the disbandment of R&D projects for genetically modified humans, and emphasized that their military would develop in the direction of 'replacing human-shaped weapons with sophisticated weaponry'. They would not prohibit but also would not encourage, civilian industries from continuing in that field. MHCC has already been classified as a prohibited drug, and the relevant trade deficit is expected to ease this year."
"Imperial Skylark Pharmaceuticals has confirmed the cancellation of bulk drug orders from the Federal R-Code base. The order has been taken over by Azure Cosmos's Floating City."
"After the Federal Government repeatedly reduced the rights and interests of genetically modified humans, Floating City has become the first refuge other than the Empire for genetically modified humans..."
Wu Jin froze.
The nib of the pen scratched and rustled, and countless key words appeared and extended outwards.
Floating City, genetic modification, the Empire, the Federation, trade war, human-shaped weapons--
He had even noticed that two completely different words were used for R-Code in the two different reports: R-Code base and R-Code Entertainment.
He drew lines between a few key words.
Skylark Pharmaceuticals was linked to Floating City. Before the bulk orders changed hands, Skylark Pharmaceuticals had to have been dealing with an organization with a level of economical power that was at least equivalent to that--which was a far, far cry from the scale of a survival show entertainment company.
Unless R-Code Entertainment and the R-Code base referred to two different concepts.
Wu Jin quickly divided the key words into two parts. After a little hesitation, he drew a dotted line between the Federation and the R-Code base. However, he still needed more evidence to support this link.
He didn't care about the Federation's past, but he wanted to know as much as he could--about all that Wei Shi had gone through.
The law enforcement marshal of Floating City had said that the treatment process itself was an emotional amplification process, and that the patient needed to be accompanied during the treatment.
The big boss's black cat was obviously his therapy companion, just like the law enforcement marshal's guinea pig.
Although Wu Jin didn't think that he would be able to replace the black cat, he still wanted to do everything he could to help the big boss.
If he didn't understand anything, then how could he accompany him?
The night deepened.
Wu Jin exited out of the search. His notebook was already densely filled with a series of clues.
He stretched, pulling himself into a long, comfortable rabbit strip, then looked out through the night breeze at the North Tower close by.
When he looked down again--Wu Jin suddenly froze.
After receiving a large amount of 'resources', and searching for a whole night's worth of information, the home page of his terminal that had been hijacked by the spam website changed its advertising strategy once again. 'XX Uniform Temptation', 'XX Top Secret Seed', and other such small advertisements kept popping up. There were also constant pushes for all kinds of drugs, and quite a few R-Code Entertainment gossip articles--
In the dense stream of information, all the previous search terms had been squeezed down, leaving only the ~Young Emperor's Secret Love: I became his mysterious fiancee~ still steadily dominating the upper right corner. Money had clearly been spent to keep it there.
The home page of Wu Jin's terminal was already a disaster.
He fumbled around for a long time, but couldn't get rid of the small advertisement. Finally, still angry, he went to bed.
Fortunately, the only person who would see the homepage of his terminal was himself--
Nobody else would see it...
Probably...
In the slightly cool summer night, the youth cuddled a soft, fluffy rabbit ball. His breathing soon slowed down and evened out, and he quickly fell asleep.
Two weeks of training passed by.
With only 300 trainees left, the Crosson base was much emptier than it had been for the previous segment, and the originally bustling holographic shooting range was no longer overcrowded. It was just that there would be trainees putting down their guns every now and then to fumblingly pull out a deck of cards and recite--
"The High Priestess, wisdom and keen insight; The Hanged Man, self-sacrifice; Judgement, angels blowing on their horns, resurrection..."
Wei Shi continued to display his usual style of absenteeism.
Caesar and Red mixed up three sets of cards and invented a new card game called 'Tyrannical Twelve Consecutive Blasts' in two weeks. It even reached the point where they were referred to as 'oh, you're talking about those two idiots from Crosson... ' when other trainees mentioned them...
Outside the Crosson base.
The frenzied spending on votes was finally over. One day before the next game began, the program team would also upload a pilot episode on the Star Net.
The topic 'Crosson Dance Group Performance' that had been losing popularity on Star Blog once again started to pick up attention on the survival show forum Azure Edge.
The difference was--the audience had more hardcore fans than before.
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