Deceitful Game

Chapter 315 Rebel Leader Russell

"Brother Luo?"

—It was him?

Mingpo subconsciously paused the video, a rare look of surprise appearing on his face.

Surprisingly, he wasn't too surprised to hear the news. He thought he would be greatly shocked.

But now I just feel a little nostalgic.

They spent five hours in that underwater research institute, studying the unique characteristics of their bodies. It also served as a combination of a boarding school and a small school.

The beautiful older sister who always looked after them with a smile, reminding Mingpo of her mother, was very gentle, knowledgeable, and would teach them all sorts of things. Apart from Russell, she had a good relationship with everyone else.

For some reason, Russell was always afraid of her.

Each of the five of them had something special about them—but because the research was conducted independently and the others rarely mentioned their own unique characteristics, Mingpo didn't know what their problem was either.

The publicly available information is that Russell is very skilled at dealing with people, Zheng Fu is very serious and meticulous, and the eldest brother, Annan, is the most intelligent among them. It is said that Annan's family holds high-ranking positions in a company, making him the highest-ranking among them.

The most peculiar thing about Shiyao is that she is said to have a special ability to sense time.

The specific type of amber is also unclear.

However, he knew that the older sister who was taking care of them had asked Shi Yue if he wanted to take charge of the maintenance of Tianwen, but Shi Yue refused.

After that, Shi Yue's personal courses and research stopped. However, she wasn't kicked out, so she stayed by Ming Po's side and played that "original version of tabletop role-playing games" with him.

If we arrange them from oldest to youngest in terms of age, it would be Annan, Zheng Fu, Russell, him, plus Shi Yue.

Among them, Russell and Shi Yao had the best relationship with Mingpo.

The main reason was that Annan and Zheng Fu were several years older than him and Shi Yue, making them more like older brothers than younger friends. When the three of them stood together, their heights were roughly the same. However, Annan and Zheng Fu were noticeably a head taller than them.

It was roughly like two high school students and three middle school students hanging out together. Russell was actually about the same age as the high school students, but he was slow to grow tall and had a youthful face, so he ended up hanging out with Mingpo and the other two more often.

Even the habit of giving friends strange homophonic nicknames in this life—such as "S-Ping"—originated from Russell.

He liked to call the other person "Brother Luo" because when he first met Russell, Mingpu had just learned about logarithms and was familiar with the word "log".

So sometimes, Mingpo also likes to call him "A-dui," which means "logarithm."

Bertrand Russell himself liked this nickname very much.

The invention of logarithms was of great significance to navigation and astronomy. Bertrand Russell loved the universe and stars, and he even once wanted to become an astronaut.

Mingpo thought he would go to Horizon Logistics or Tailing Heavy Industry to study interstellar overseas colonization.

—How did he end up joining the rebel army?

So Mingpo focused his attention on Russell in the picture.

Mingpo and Shiyue were both around 1.6 meters tall back then. Now Mingpo is almost 1.9 meters tall, and Shiyue is already 1.8 meters tall—but Russell is still 1.6 meters tall.

Time seemed to stand still for him.

He was still as young as he was back then, with a handsome and gentle appearance, and anyone who looked at him could feel his mild and harmless temperament.

Judging from his demeanor, he's probably a high-ranking official!

Mingpo reopened the paused video and stared intently at her old friend in the video.

"If you're watching this video, someone has probably already handed you the chip. Ah, he may not have told you what's inside the chip—but he trusts you'll watch it."

Russell's voice in the video is full of warmth and strength: "Just as I believe, there must be confusion in your heart."

"I don't know you. But I imagine you're like most people I know."

"Every morning I wake up to the notification sound from my collar, brush my teeth with the toothpaste provided by the company, and pass by the same GG screen on my way to work in the hovercar. The slogan on the GG screen changes every month."

"Maybe last week we were dedicated to bringing the greatest happiness to everyone, and next week we'll be living in the happiest sector, that's wonderful."

"You may not agree, but you'll certainly feel that it's at least not worth opposing—because it's unnecessary. Am I right, my stranger?"

Russell's voice was gentle yet firm: "If you also think that what I'm saying is at least not worth opposing, then please listen to the end."

I read a story from an old era.

"There was a group of people living in a cave, who were locked to the walls from childhood to adulthood. A fire was lit in the middle of the cave, and they could only see their shadows on the cave walls."

"Here, three meals a day are delivered, and their excrement is cleaned up. There are fires so they don't freeze, and there's food so they don't starve. They live carefree and normal lives, believing that those shadows are their whole world, and that those who take care of them are their masters."

"But one day, a lucky one broke free of his chains."

He walked to the cave entrance, saw the sun, and saw the whole world under the sun's rays.

He was overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of it. He realized that all he had seen in the first half of his life was the shadow of others. The moment he saw that light, his mind was permanently altered, and he could never return to that cave.

"Then, he made a decision. He went back into the cave and began gesturing wildly, telling the others about the outside world. He told them that fire didn't just come from the ground, that the light came from the sky. But the others just laughed at him, saying that something had blinded him and that he was talking nonsense."

"The man was furious. He wanted to unlock the chains of the others and let them see the whole world they saw. But the others were worried that this would anger their master, and that if they were unlocked, they would have no food and would have to leave the warm cave."

"So they strangled him with chains."

Russell's voice was unhurried, like a late-night news anchor, full of emotion yet clear in every word.

"You never ask questions you shouldn't ask, which is a good habit, and that's why you've survived this long. I thought so too—I mean, a long time ago."

I worked at one of the "Big Eight" companies. My superiors valued me highly, and I became a section chief at a young age—I think you know how prestigious that is.

"My colleagues were all very nice to me. When I worked overtime, someone would leave a bag of candy on my desk, sometimes more than one. My boss would occasionally take me out for a drive to get some fresh air. Back then, there were no airships, so we drove spaceships. We crashed around in the wasteland, randomly firing and destroying everything around us."

"I have been pursued by wealthy young ladies, and not just young ladies. I've been to outer space to look down on this broken planet, and I've also set foot in the deep sea. I have nothing to complain about in my life."

"If someone came back from the future when I was eleven or twelve years old and told me that one day I would inevitably become a rebel," I would reply without hesitation, "You're an idiot."

Upon seeing this, Mingpo's lips curled up slightly.

He also remembered Russell's way of speaking.

This short man had an unexpectedly volatile temper. Although he appeared gentle and quiet, with a beautiful face like a young girl, and was very popular—in reality, Russell was always the most hot-tempered of the five.

He just has a "shell" on his body.

He never tells outsiders what's on his mind, and he doesn't even reveal his true personality to people he doesn't know well.

He is like a mirror, always reflecting how others perceive him.

He can become anyone's confidant; he can always guess other people's true desires; he can always become the person others want him to be—he can be said to be a born psychologist.

Life at the underwater research institute was incredibly oppressive. No one knew when the war would end, nor did anyone know if they would suddenly die there.

This is not impossible. If the barrier breaks or the outer shell of the research institute is breached, the seawater will instantly submerge them. Or, if the outside world forgets about them, they will starve to death here.

Or, if the deceivers are defeated, they might become guinea pigs. Or they might be killed by the angry mortals.

The most painful part is that these researchers are almost all ordinary people.

Of these, only about 20% are truly deceitful.

In other words, if this war is viewed as a racial war between charlatans and mortals, then they are all traitors.

If it weren't for Russell, they probably would have gone mad long ago.

But Russell would only truly complain about how he had served those "idiots" so gently and softly when he was back in front of them.

"Then, I gradually began to notice some things."

"A young man joined my team. He is very steady, hardworking, polite, and ambitious."

He often comes to me asking how to do things better, and I always answer his questions patiently.

"But one day, he didn't come to work. He didn't come the next day either, and the third day as well. I went to ask the HR department, and they said he had been transferred. When I asked him where he had been transferred to, the HR department wouldn't say anything."

His employee ID card was changed to "cancelled" that same day.

"What did he do wrong? I don't think so. He's an orphan and a genius. Although geniuses are now a dime a dozen, I think you know how difficult it is for an orphan to get into the top eight based on his academic performance."

He barely survived the war, studied until he was thirty, and finally got the job he had always dreamed of. But less than a month later, before he even received his first paycheck, he disappeared.

"Where did he go? I think you all know—he became a mining machine."

"Because he's smart enough. Yes, because he's so outstanding, he needs to sacrifice more of himself for the company. But is he really that outstanding? He died in the third game after the selection process."

When I asked him where he had gone, he was dying in the game.

"What did he get? He got nothing. He didn't even receive his first month's salary, yet he gave everything for the company."

"He didn't even rebel against the company. The company didn't necessarily need him to do all this. The company was just a machine, a behemoth, blindly pushing forward, devouring the whole world to grow."

"The company's appetite is getting bigger and bigger. The bigger the circle, the more of the outside world it comes into contact with."

The higher an animal is in the food chain, the greater the pressure to feed it.

"When a company expands to a certain extent, everyone will be drawn into it."

"I don't want to be the one who gets killed. But I want to be the lucky one who makes it to the cave entrance."

"I am Russell, the leader of the rebels. I have found a way to break the chains. We'll find out what the sun looks like when we go out and see."

"If you agree, you don't need to do anything. Someone will find you."

"I'll be waiting for you at the cave entrance."