When the countdown in the room hit 00:00, Lin Sandie was led out. No one searched her, and no one commented on her every move.

Before leaving, Lin Sandie had asked Lao Liu for a hair tie and pulled her long hair into a bun. Then, unhurriedly, she took off the thin windbreaker she was wearing and draped it over her left arm.

Her white shirt was tucked into black trousers. Being slightly obsessive-compulsive, she had carefully fastened every button on her shirt, making her look as neat and clean as if she were attending a banquet.

Dying dressed like this, she thought, should be reasonably dignified.

She was escorted by two monsters in black suits and gold masks to a cage enclosed on all sides by black iron bars.

The cage stood in a space resembling an atrium, with soft white light spilling down from above. It looked to be about three stories high. A massive screen hung in the center, displaying information about her and her opponent, Qian Kun.

On the second level of the atrium sat rows of male monsters in well-tailored suits and female monsters in elegant attire. Lin Sandie wasn’t wearing her glasses, so she couldn’t distinguish them clearly, judging them only by their clothing. The monsters’ faces, covered in black, lightning-like cracks, were each hidden behind an exquisite mask. These masks were all inlaid with pearls and ornaments, shimmering with a captivating luster under the soft lights.

There were no humans here, only monsters.

Lin Sandie fought to keep herself from trembling too violently. Although she couldn’t see the monsters’ expressions, she could feel countless pairs of eyes—thousands of them—staring at her coldly.

The scene gave her a strange illusion. It was billed as a life-or-death “performance,” but it felt more like a sacrificial ritual, offering up life and soul to the monsters.

Tearing her gaze away from the spectators, Lin Sandie stood up straight and looked at the monster on the opposite side of the cage.

That must be her opponent, Qian Kun.

“Clank!”

As the iron gate of the cage directly in front of Lin Sandie opened, she saw the gate in front of Qian Kun open as well.

The monster in the black suit who had opened the door gestured for Lin Sandie to enter.

Lin Sandie took a deep breath, tightened her grip on the Kukri in her hand, and entered the iron cage without hesitation.

In a certain viewing box on the second floor, unbeknownst to Lin Sandie, a masked Yan Ting picked up the remote that Zhang Jun usually used for betting, her face ashen. Anger, worry, helplessness, and despair churned within her. She decisively keyed in 2,000,000 and pressed the button for the left side.

“Even if you have money to burn, you don’t have to squander it like this, do you?” Zhang Jun, sitting beside her, laughed, mocking his wife’s childishness.

Yan Ting tossed the remote down without a word.

In another location, Kang Yi saw Lin Sandie, looking as fresh as if she were attending a banquet, and raised an eyebrow behind her mask. She pressed 100,000 and the left button on her remote.

Consider the 100,000 points a prayer for you, Kang Yi thought.

After entering the cage, Lin Sandie stared blankly at her opponent, who stood three or four meters away, waiting for the signal gun.

During this brief wait, the monster’s maw, full of sharp teeth, opened and closed, and the black, lightning-like cracks on its face widened.

“I like women like you. Fucking you must feel great.”

Lin Sandie showed no reaction to Qian Kun’s humiliating remark.

“Bang!” The signal gun fired!

Qian Kun, who had already been injected with a stimulant, let out a yell and charged at Lin Sandie with a dagger, the silver blade glinting with a vibrant killing intent. Lin Sandie clutched the thin windbreaker draped over her arm and ran to the side, dodging his strike. But his sprint was too fast. Just as she dodged a short distance away, he had already adjusted his direction and lunged at her again.

Lin Sandie dodged once more. With that, the distance between them had shrunk to a point where she had no choice but to face him.

Lin Sandie’s timid evasion only made Qian Kun more excited. Without thinking, he continued to lunge at her.

The third time Qian Kun swung his dagger, Lin Sandie, with nowhere left to run, raised her Kukri. The two short blades collided with a teeth-grinding clang.

“Clang!!”

The force of the blow sent a numbing shock through Lin Sandie’s weaker arm, forcing it down uncontrollably. Qian Kun’s dagger, driven by brute strength, sliced a bloody gash down from her right collarbone.

Crimson blood quickly bloomed across her white shirt. Qian Kun let out a heavy, excited gasp. The stimulant sent his adrenaline surging to its peak. He could have used a more efficient thrust, but he ignored that option, choosing instead to hack at Lin Sandie’s clearly weakened right arm.

A gash so deep you could see bone was instantly carved into Lin Sandie’s numb right forearm. Even so, she held tightly to the Kukri.

“Die!” Qian Kun shouted, triumphant. He pressed his advantage, switching his grip from a slash to a thrust and aiming the dagger at Lin Sandie’s heart, preparing to end her life in one move.

Lin Sandie, who had been dodging the entire time, was now backed into a corner. But she had also found her opportunity.

She flung up the thin windbreaker she had been holding. The brown coat instantly obscured the monster’s vision. With a press of her fingers on her left hand, which had been hidden by the coat, her hand shot out like an unsheathed blade. The gift Kang Yi had given her was now fastened to the windbreaker.

“Aargh—” The monster let out a pained scream and stumbled backward. Lin Sandie repeated the motion with a blank expression. Countless red holes appeared in the once-pristine brown windbreaker, each surrounded by vortex-like wrinkles she had subconsciously created. This was her only chance to survive…

In that instant, the situation on the floor was reversed. The entire venue fell silent, save for the monster’s screams.

Ignoring the screams and insults, Lin Sandie, like the spectators, wore the most solid and merciless of masks. After frantically stabbing the monster several times, she raised her right hand, which had finally begun to recover from the numbness and the gash. Her rain-colored eyes reflected the silver glint of the Kukri in the light. She was as cold as the Grim Reaper raising its scythe, about to bring it down heavily on the monster’s neck and take its life.

As if sensing the approach of death, Qian Kun, finally freeing his vision from the blood-soaked windbreaker, kicked viciously at Lin Sandie’s abdomen.

The impact sent Lin Sandie flying backward. In that moment, she deliberately dropped the spring knife from Kang Yi and grabbed a corner of the windbreaker.

The force of the kick sent her sliding across the floor. Her bleeding arm scraped a grim, messy streak of blood on the marble. Wasting no time, before Qian Kun could make his next move, Lin Sandie endured the sharp pain in her abdomen and collarbone and raised her hand to call for a timeout.

“Fucking hell! I’m gonna kill you, you cheating bitch!” Qian Kun, having been stabbed several times by Lin Sandie’s extra spring knife, was about to lunge forward in a rage to continue his assault. But the two men in black suits who served as referees inside the cage immediately rushed forward, restrained him firmly, and declared Lin Sandie’s timeout valid.

Clutching the blood-soaked and tattered windbreaker, Lin Sandie struggled to her feet. Her beautiful, expressionless face suddenly broke into a sweet smile directed at Qian Kun. The smile was so stunning it felt to the spectators as if they’d been shot in the heart. Her small, delicate canine teeth seemed to glisten with a bloodthirsty sheen under the lights. She transferred the Kukri from her right hand to her left. Blood continued to stream from her badly wounded right hand, flowing over her wrist and palm until her entire hand looked as if it were wearing a red glove.

Still smiling, Lin Sandie raised her right hand, extended a thumb toward Qian Kun, and pointed it downward.

“Fuck you!! You fucking bitch! I’ll kill you in the second half! Fuck you!!!” Qian Kun, already a monster, was once again incited to a frenzy. He thrashed wildly, trying to attack Lin Sandie, but the two men in suits held him tight. The violent emotional outburst and movement only caused more blood to pour from the wounds she had inflicted.

Ignoring her opponent’s fury, Lin Sandie turned to leave the cage. The moment she turned, the smile vanished from her face. She lightly pressed a hand to her abdomen, which was causing her to break out in a cold sweat from the pain. Her right arm hung limply at her side, droplets of blood falling from her fingertips onto the marble floor. She walked out with a normal expression and was led back to her original room. By the time she arrived, she was drenched in sweat, her face as white as paper.

“Mr. Liu, a stimulant, please,” Lin Sandie said, leaning on Liu Shier, who had come to meet her. She sat down heavily on the bench.

“You’ve got a ten-minute halftime break,” Liu Shier said, helping her sit properly. He immediately opened his black leather case, took out a transparent syringe, and chattered on, “I saw your performance. Nothing to say, really well done. The moment you raised your hand, I got the stimulant ready for you.”

“Thank you.” Lin Sandie watched as Liu Shier injected a vial of stimulant into her arm. It wasn’t instantaneous, so she was still sweating from the pain.

“Alright, I’ll clean your wounds now.”

“Thank you,” Lin Sandie choked out, her eyes red. The pain in her arm, shoulder, chest, and abdomen had become almost unbearable.

“Don’t cry, don’t cry. You can win this. I’m betting on you.” Because the wound on the front of her arm was more severe, Liu Shier first used scissors to cut away the sleeve. Lin Sandie’s right forearm had been split open horizontally, gushing blood—a mangled mess of flesh.

Time and resources were limited, so Liu Shier could only provide basic treatment. He quickly disinfected her right arm, stitched it up with a needle and thread, applied a hemostatic gel, and then wrapped it in a layer of bandages.

By then, the stimulant had taken effect. Lin Sandie felt some relief and was no longer drenched in a cold sweat, though her complexion was still ghastly. The blood-soaked white shirt she wore stood in stark contrast to her pale face.

After tending to her arm, Liu Shier immediately helped unbutton her shirt. He saw a gruesome gash running from her collarbone downward. The wound was about a palm’s length, and since it was from the tip of the dagger, it wasn’t too severe. But even after it healed, it would surely leave a scar.

“Is he getting the same treatment over there?” Lin Sandie raised her uninjured hand to wipe the tears from her face. Her voice was a little hoarse. The stimulant had dulled the pain considerably, and she was no longer crying.

“More or less. Those stabs you gave him are much more serious than your current injuries. Calling for a timeout right then was the absolute right move.”

Lin Sandie grunted in acknowledgment and looked up at the display screen above the door. It was counting down the break time, and her odds had changed.

Before, it was 1 to 100. Now, it was 1 to 5. Qian Kun’s odds had also become 1 to 5. This meant the betting odds for the second half would be different from the first.

After finishing the bandaging, Liu Shier let out a sigh of relief and sat down next to her, lighting a cigarette.

“Want one?” Liu Shier offered the cigarette to Lin Sandie, but she shook her head.

“Young lady, can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead,” Lin Sandie said, maintaining her good manners even through the intense pain.

“You could have used the windbreaker to block his vision from the start. Why did you wait until after you were wounded to make your move?”

“…If I didn’t let him lower his guard, I couldn’t have achieved the level of damage I wanted.”

“What kind of effect?” Liu Shier asked, his expression complicated. He couldn’t figure Lin Sandie out. She was clearly terrified, so scared she would cry, but when faced with a dangerous situation, she became like a machine. She thought calmly, and her body executed her brain’s commands with absolute precision. She even remembered to use little tricks while stabbing him. This wasn’t something an ordinary person could do.

“When a person is excited, their heart beats faster. It’s better for bloodletting.” Lin Sandie didn’t want to die. Her desire to live made her calculate every last detail. Every step she took was difficult, but with every step, Lin Sandie was determined to reap the highest reward for the smallest, or at least an acceptable, cost.

“Uh…” Hearing Lin Sandie’s unexpected answer, Liu Shier looked at the young woman before him with new respect. “You certainly know a lot.”

Even with just daggers, a life-or-death battle like this usually didn’t last long. After all, both fighters were ordinary people with few techniques to use, relying on the most direct method of hacking at each other. Liu Shier had initially thought that Lin Sandie would be killed instantly by Qian Kun, who outmatched her in every way. But she had controlled her fear of a stronger opponent and approached the fight with a rational, almost cold-blooded strategy, turning the tables in her favor in just a few short minutes.

“Mm,” Lin Sandie answered softly. She unfolded the windbreaker on her lap and reached into the pocket. She could tell instantly that the lenses of her glasses had fallen out. She didn’t take them out. Instead, she pulled out the photograph. The woman on it, who looked exactly like her, was still smiling, though the corners were now stained with blood.

Lin Sandie stared at the woman’s face for a long time without expression before putting it back in her pocket.

“Mr. Liu, can I ask you for a favor?” Lin Sandie said after a moment of contemplation.

“What is it?”

“If I win but don’t get a chance to come back for this windbreaker, could you help bring it to me?”

“I can, but is the windbreaker that important?”

“Yes. The things inside are very important to me.”

Because its pocket still held the glasses that shielded her from seeing the monsters. The act of taking out the photograph was merely a misdirection. Lin Sandie needed the monsters to believe that she truly had no connection to the woman who looked identical to her.

Lin Sandie is especially afraid of pain.