Marked the Protagonist A (Translated)

Chapter 29: How to Play and Win

Chapter 29: How to Play and Win

Now a game was laid out in front of Ji Chenxi.

With his smile unchanged, Ji Chenxi narrowed his eyes as he looked at Chi Zhuo, as if trying to see through the simple words to the person behind them.

The silence that spread over him made it impossible to discern his exact attitude.

Did he want to play a game filled with excitement for someone his age, or did he reject the idea of being led by someone else?

Even though there was less than a 20% chance of refusal, Chi Zhuo still felt a bit nervous. His heart rate fluctuated in a way comparable to his first time piloting a mech in his youth. When people are nervous, they instinctively hold their breath. Although Chi Zhuo didn't quite reach that level, his restrained breathing was enough to prove that his mind was far from as calm as he appeared.

Ji Chenxi didn't scrutinize him for long before he chuckled, "Are you nervous?"

"No."

"That's a shame. If you had said you cared about the outcome, I might have satisfied you."

"What do you mean, Your Highness?" Chi Zhuo's brows slightly furrowed.

"I mean, I have a bit of interest in the wager, but not enough to really play a game with you. In emotional games, very few end in complete victory. Chi Zhuo, you're trying to pull me into a bottomless abyss."

What Chi Zhuo wanted wasn't just to tempt him to play with fire. To Ji Chenxi, alphas sometimes seemed like creatures controlled by desire and the urge to dominate. They were arrogant, self-important, and refused to submit. When two such creatures meet, it inevitably becomes a life-or-death struggle. If one dies in the process, that's that, but the real danger lies in their potential to fall in love with the act of conquering and suppressing each other. The alpha's inherent nature was sometimes like a poison.

"Refusing?" Even though he already understood the answer, Chi Zhuo asked again to confirm.

"Yes, I think I've been pretty straightforward in my refusal."

Ji Chenxi's smile, not yet fully bloomed, wasn't as vibrant as a rose; instead, it resembled the withered beauty of the last flowers of spring—pure and flawless, but eerily beautiful like the most exquisite jade carving, hinting at a fragile beauty awaiting its demise.

His retracting smile only emphasized the finality of his rejection.

Faced with such an unguarded refusal, the muscles in Chi Zhuo's throat tightened. After a moment, he finally let out a voice that seemed utterly indifferent, as though he didn't care.

"It was just a game to begin with, and Your Highness naturally has the right to refuse."

Ji Chenxi responded casually with a simple "Mm.Look, when you said that earlier, Chi Zhuo-ge, you almost scared me into thinking you liked me."

"No such thing."

"That's good. Let's go." With a simple farewell, Ji Chenxi didn't wait for a reply and left first.

He departed so quickly that, in the blink of an eye, he had disappeared from sight.

Once Ji Chenxi was far enough from the laboratory where he had been, he slowed down. He meticulously cleaned up all traces of his presence, including the evidence of his departure, and wiped the surrounding surveillance.

After finishing all of that, he released control of the system, setting a few traps that would self-destruct when anyone tried to trace events that had occurred an hour earlier.

With that done, Ji Chenxi turned his attention to the research data he had transferred to his light-brain earlier.

Chi Zhuo didn't seem very interested in the direction of this research, so naturally, Ji Chenxi wasn't eager to share the materials with him. If he hadn't happened to see it, it would've just gathered dust in his device. But, since he noticed it now, he took a casual look.

The earlier failures were so repugnant that Ji Chenxi almost concluded that this was a useless lab wasting resources without producing any valuable results. That is, until he saw the core focus of the research and a log titled "Miracle."

The bold strokes of the two characters gave the otherwise cold experimental log a feverish intensity. One could imagine how excited the person who wrote them must have been.

Ji Chenxi's eyes darkened. He had a feeling this might be the most important part of the entire lab.

His fingers paused, but he didn't open the log. Some things, like Pandora's Box, weren't meant to be casually opened.

As Ji Chenxi hesitated, a hidden symbol flashed gently on his light-brain.

He remembered he hadn't logged in for a while. So, Ji Chenxi disconnected from the internet, connected to the dark web, switched through several interfaces, and finally entered a pitch-black communication page. The presence of numerous unread messages was overwhelming. After quickly scanning through the people who had contacted him, he casually clicked on a familiar name with over 99 unread messages.

Just as he was skimming through, a new message popped up.

Night Wanderer: [Bai Wei?]

Night Wanderer: [Missing person return?!]

Night Wanderer: [Don't pretend! I can see it's been read. Leaving someone on read is a grave sin!!]

Message after message flooded in. Ji Chenxi decided not to scroll up any further and casually tapped on the "left on read" part before typing a line of text and sending it.

Bai Wei: [Just saw it, been busy lately.]

Ji Chenxi lied without batting an eye. In fact, he had been quite free lately—freer than usual, actually. The only reason he had disappeared for so long was that he wanted a proper vacation.

Night Wanderer: [Stop scrolling through messages, join the group.]

Originally planning to just skim through the messages, Ji Chenxi swiftly changed course and entered their small group chat.

The group had been talking about something related to the black market, but with Night Wanderer's shout of "Bai Wei's back," the entire conversation shifted.

Traveler: [What? Bai Wei? Do we have someone by that name in this group?]

Morning Star: [Bai Wei, long time no see (smile).]

Night Wanderer: [Traveler, your acting is way too exaggerated.]

Delusion: [Since Bai Wei is back, why don't we discuss the upcoming auction on Imperial Star?]

Morning Star: [Sounds good. Bai Wei is from Imperial Star, after all.]

After glancing briefly at the messages in the seven-person group, Ji Chenxi asked, [Any plans recently?]

Delusion: [Nothing big recently. There was something before, though—someone reached out wanting us to kill the Third Prince of the Empire. I turned them down. Later, there was chaos on Nanfey Star—some alpha went berserk and bit seventy-two people to death. Big news. But, by the time we investigated, the alpha had already been moved, and we couldn't find any trace of their past life.]

Translation Notes:

"Playing with fire" is an idiomatic expression meaning engaging in risky behavior that could lead to danger.

"Alpha's inherent nature like a poison" refers to typical traits of an alpha in omegaverse fiction, often associated with aggression or dominance.

"Pandora's Box" is a metaphor for unleashing something that can't be undone, derived from Greek mythology.

"Leaving someone on read" refers to modern messaging, meaning that someone has read the message but didn't respond, often seen as rude or dismissive.