TDU Chapter 163: Battle of Wits and Courage
Chapter 163 Battle of Wits and Courage
The game began, the air thick with tension.
As a {Combatant} game, Terrestrial Chicken had pushed the boundaries of {combat} to their absolute extremes—one side engaged in a battle of wits, while the other relied on sheer courage. The slightest misstep in either aspect, whether in strategy or action, would mean certain death for both.
In the oppressive silence that followed, the woman across from them broke the tension. "Do you want to draw first, or shall I go first?"
"It doesn't matter," Qi Xia replied, his tone composed and steady. "You go first."
The woman nodded, her expression unreadable, as she drew a card and placed it face down in front of her. She didn’t glance at it, her focus entirely on Qi Xia across the table.
Qi Xia followed suit, drawing a card with slow, deliberate movements. He, too, placed it down without looking at the content, his gaze locked onto the woman’s.
In this high-stakes game, every action, every glance, carried weight. The cards were merely tools of fate; the true battle lay in the silent exchange between the {Strategists}. The act of drawing the cards was not a mere formality—it was a test of willpower, of control, and of the ability to mask every thought. Both {Strategists} maintained an air of composure, refusing to reveal the slightest hint of hesitation.
Doctor Zhao and the tall man in the glass room both swallowed nervously at the sight of this unfolding scene.
After both parties had drawn five cards, Qi Xia carefully gathered them in his hand and slowly fanned them open. His eyes scanned the cards—the situation was grim.
A shield, a stone, three ropes. The cards before him were hardly the tools fit for a combatant. It seemed more like relics from the Stone Age, far from the cunning and complexity he had hoped for in {Arsenal Cards}.
He carefully gathered the cards together, then looked up at the woman sitting across from him. She remained as composed as ever, glancing briefly at the cards in her hand before raising her eyes to meet his.
"My name is Qi Xia. And you are?"
"Su Shan (苏闪)," the woman replied.
"Shan(闪)?" Qi Xia raised an eyebrow, finding the name intriguing. "The shan from {brilliant (闪亮)}?"
"Yes," she nodded.
"Pleasure to meet you." Qi Xia offered a perfunctory nod, his expression neutral, before his attention shifted to the deck of cards on the table. He looked at his hand—a stone and three ropes. It seemed that the deck contained a higher number of {stone} and {rope} cards.
In this way, the game of {Arsenal Cards} revealed its logic—higher-lethality cards were in short supply. {Sticks} should be less common than {stones}, and {knives} would be the rarest of the three.
Of course, there was also a second possibility—perhaps the number of all the cards was the same, and his luck was simply abysmal.
So... what cards had the woman named Su Shan drawn? Had she pulled cards from the {Iron Age}? Was there a {knife} among them?
Would she have drawn two {Vital Cards} and one {Fatal Card}?
"YOU TWO, if you’ve made up your minds, please play your cards!" Terrestrial Chicken's voice broke through their thoughts, his hand knocking loudly against the table.
Qi Xia paused for a moment, then silently drew a card and placed it on the table. Lifting his gaze, he asked, "Su Shan, do you think there's a possibility..."
"Of what?"
"A possibility that if we exhaust the entire deck, yet find no definitive winner or loser, the game would settle into a {tie}?"
"Would it?" Su Shan responded with a hint of indifference, her fingers already drawing a card from her hand. She held it up to examine, her gaze briefly flickering over its contents. "If it turned out to be a tie… then that would be ideal, wouldn’t it?"
"Then let’s take it easy," Qi Xia said, his words measured, "No need for unnecessary bloodshed."
"Alright," Su Shan replied with a subtle nod, and pushed her card forward.
Qi Xia mirrored her gesture, pushing his own card to the table's center.
The cards had been dealt.
Doctor Zhao and the man named Zi Chen were so tense, they nearly forgot how to breathe. Their gazes locked onto the two figures in the distance, who, despite the rising anticipation, picked their cards with unsettling calmness. An electric silence followed as Doctor Zhao and Zi Chen, hearts pounding, instinctively shifted their focus to the ceiling above.
Their first {weapon} would soon descend right here.
"Please, reveal your cards," Terrestrial Chicken directed.
Without hesitation, Qi Xia and Su Shan simultaneously flipped their cards. At that very instant, the openings above Doctor Zhao and Zi Chen's heads sprang open, releasing dark objects to fall from the shadows above.
The two men rushed forward to claim their {arsenal}, but Doctor Zhao stood frozen in disbelief—what fell before him was nothing more than a simple {rope}.
He quickly snatched it up before frantically turning his head back. His eyes went wide as he saw the towering figure of the 1.9-meter-tall man, slowly picking up a chopper knife that had dropped to the ground.
"AHH!" Doctor Zhao's scream echoed with sheer mental anguish. "What is this bullshit?! Qi Xia, are you fucking kidding me?!" Without a moment’s hesitation, he charged toward the glass wall, thrashing at it with the rope. "Qi Xia! Are you fucking kidding me?!"
Fortunately, the glass wall appeared specially designed—tough, impenetrable. No matter how hard Doctor Zhao struck it, not a single crack appeared.
Qi Xia’s brows knitted in thought.
His opponent had indeed drawn a {knife}. The wager had been made, betting that he wouldn’t use the {shield} in the first round—so she had boldly gambled on the {knife}.
Qi Xia inhaled deeply. "Playing this game with the logic of rock-paper-scissors is one thing, but unfortunately, there are other factors at play."
"Such as?" Su Shan asked.
"Such as... {human conscience}."
Terrestrial Chicken picked up the walkie-talkie beside him and stated, "Round one, may the {Combatant} begin."
The announcement echoed in Doctor Zhao and Zi Chen’s room, and the countdown timer on the side flickered to life, its seconds ticking away relentlessly.
"Be–Begin?" Doctor Zhao’s heart raced as he stumbled back, a sense of impending doom creeping over him.
"ARRRGH!" Zi Chen roared to muster courage, his voice trembling with barely contained adrenaline as he took a step forward, chopper knife in hand.
Doctor Zhao gripped the rope tightly with both hands, his body quivering uncontrollably. He knew all too well that he was no Wong Fei-hung[1]; it was impossible to use a simple rope to disarm a man with a chopper knife. His opponent towered over him, stronger, heavier—and now armed with a weapon far more formidable than his own. How was he supposed to fight?
"I... I!" Zi Chen’s hands trembled as the chopper knife swayed unsteadily in his grip. He didn't appear any more prepared than Doctor Zhao, both of them paralyzed by the weight of the situation.
"You—think carefully!" Doctor Zhao’s voice cracked, a sob barely contained in his throat. "This is murder!!"
"I know!! Even if I kill you... I—I also..." Zi Chen's words faltered as he gritted his teeth, inching forward with the chopper knife, but unable to follow through. His body moved like a marionette, but his resolve was a fragile thread, easily snapped.
What would an average person do, locked in a glass room, a knife thrust into their hands, and told they must kill to survive? How many times would they strike in those ten seconds?
The answer is none.
Qi Xia stared at the towering figure through the glass wall, his expression unreadable.
Ten seconds—far too short a time. The man before him was trapped by {normalcy bias}, still clinging to the hope that things wouldn't escalate to such extremes. He had yet to mentally prepare for the true nature of the situation. What he didn't realize was that Su Shan had already moved beyond this phase. She had long since discarded any illusion of normalcy and, instead, crafted a perfect strategy—a plan that had been set in motion from the very beginning, designed to end the game in one decisive strike.
There was a clear gap in their collaborative thinking. Or, more accurately, their intellectual capacities were operating on entirely different planes.
The first card played was {knife}, a masterstroke for the {battle of wits}. It was the perfect choice—designed to disrupt the opponent’s response time. If the two figures locked in the glass room were merely virtual characters, devoid of thought or hesitation, Qi Xia would have lost by now.
But, alas, human conscience is far more complicated than that.
Ten seconds slipped by in an instant, the time for action long since expired. In those brief, agonizing moments, the man named Zi Chen had done nothing more than take three tentative steps forward. That was the extent of his effort—the limit of what a normal person could do under such pressure.
"Please throw the props into the opening," Terrestrial Chicken instructed, his voice coming through the walkie-talkie.
"Zi Chen... why?!" The woman slapped the table in frustration, her face flushed with unwillingness. "Why are you so stupid?!"
Qi Xia shook his head with a resigned sigh. It wasn’t just this young man, who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. Even someone like Zhang Shan, seasoned by countless battles, might have struggled to decisively eliminate the opponent in the first round.
With a look of frustration, Zi Chen hurled the chopper knife into the opening. His anger was palpable as he slapped himself several times in a mix of self-loathing and regret.
Doctor Zhao, as though he had narrowly escaped death, trembled uncontrollably before tossing the rope into the opening as well.
TL Note: The act of using a rope to disarm a man with a knife….. I couldn’t find the specific movie where that scene happened, so here's a fight of rope vs dowel (where Jet Li stars as Wong Fei-hung in the movie ‘Once Upon a Time in China’)
Footnote:
[1] Wong Fei-hung - Wong Fei-hung (born Wong Sek-cheung with the courtesy name Tat-wun; 19 August 1847 – 17 April 1925) was a Chinese martial artist, physician, and folk hero. His recent fame was due to becoming the protagonist of numerous martial arts films and television series. The role of Wong Fei-hung has been played by numerous well-known stars of Hong Kong and Chinese cinema, including Gordon Liu, Jackie Chan, Kwan Tak-hing, Jet Li, Vincent Zhao, and Sammo Hung. Even though he was considered an expert in the Hung Ga style of Chinese martial arts, his real public fame was as a physician who practiced and taught acupuncture.
