That day, Uncle Wan took several aunties to participate in a game, and didn’t return until evening.

But only Uncle Wan himself came back.

Uncle Wan was covered in blood, his eyes bloodshot red. He smelled both angry and afraid.

I was glad that the lady hadn’t felt well that day and hadn’t gone out with him, otherwise I might never have seen her again.

“Damn it… what ‘Earth-Tiger’… so absurd…” He returned to our secret base trembling all over, then plopped down right in front of the lady and me. He didn’t look at us at all, just muttered to himself.

I felt even more afraid. He looked dazed and confused, very much like my drunken father.

Seeing the bloodstains on his body, Siwei-jie also emitted a scent of fear, then softly asked: “What about Sister Fang and the others…?”

“All dead… not one left…” Uncle Wan raised his head, his whole body trembling. “I always thought it was fake… this place actually really kills people…? What the hell kind of place is this…”

“‘Earth-Tiger’?” The lady was stunned. “Before weren’t they all ‘Man-Tigers’? There’s ‘Earth’ too?”

“I’m also finding out for the first time…”

Uncle Wan rubbed his hands together, as if recalling the situation at that time. At this moment I saw that his hands were also covered in dried blood.

His scent had both “heaviness” and “fear.”

“A whole group of us were locked in a circular arena… that tiger told us to kill each other… but how could we possibly listen to him like that? All of us just stood in the circular arena without moving…”

He kept rubbing his hands.

“Then that tiger… threw down a cleaver in the center of the arena…” Uncle Wan gave a bitter smile and said, “How ridiculous… people are just like that. When everyone is empty-handed, no one has any intention of attacking others… but once there’s a knife in the center of the arena…”

Listening to Uncle Wan’s words, the lady also stood beside him with a grave expression. Her scent began to turn sorrowful.

“Everyone started frantically fighting for that knife…” Uncle Wan continued telling us the story. “The scene instantly descended into chaos, but I knew some people weren’t really grabbing the knife to kill—they just didn’t want the knife to fall into someone else’s hands… Because only when the knife is in your own hands can you consider it safe, but once it’s in someone else’s hands, you can only be afraid. That tiger exploited exactly this point…”

“That makes sense,” the lady nodded after listening. “Then… in the end you survived?”

Her tone became somewhat stiff, and her scent became very cautious.

“Yes,” Uncle Wan answered with a heavy scent.

“So…” The lady also started rubbing her hands. She smelled very nervous. “You killed Sister Fang and all of them?”

“I…” A trace of something unusual flashed across Uncle Wan’s face. He lowered his head to look at his blood-stained hands, then said haltingly, “How could that be… clearly they wanted to kill me. I was just defending myself…”

After Uncle Wan finished saying this, his aura changed, and I was suddenly stunned for a moment.

At this moment, a strange, fresh fragrance was emanating from his body. This fresh scent was even similar to the smell on my own body.

It was as fragrant as the scent on my body, except the fragrance was slightly different—like two different bars of soap.

And at this moment, two words floated up in my mind—”Amplification.”

This was a fresh scent called “Amplification.” It was stronger than all other scents, constantly drilling into my nose. I couldn’t avoid it at all.

“Uncle…” I finally couldn’t help but say, “You smell so nice.”

“Smell nice…?”

He and the lady both looked at me simultaneously, their expressions very confused.

Uncle Wan lowered his head to survey the large patches of bloodstains on his body, and a trace of angry scent emerged.

“Are you mocking me, kid…?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “I’m covered in the stench of blood… and you’re telling me I ‘smell nice’?”

I was a bit afraid and shifted behind the lady. I felt like what I said should have been something adults would like, but I didn’t know why he got angry.

Before, when I praised adults, they were always very happy.

The lady blocked me behind her and raised her head to speak to Uncle Wan: “Brother Wan, calm down first. Yingxiong rarely speaks. Let’s hear his thoughts first.”

“Hear his thoughts…? Too ridiculous. I must have been too nice to him,” Uncle Wan laughed. “I thought that having nine people survive from our room would give us an advantage over other rooms, but who would have known there’d be a kid dragging us down—can’t do anything, can only add to the chaos here. Now so many people have died, and he still dares to mock me…”

“I… I didn’t add to the chaos…” I hid my head behind the lady’s back and said softly. “I also didn’t ‘mock’ you… You can all smell it… Uncle Wan smells very nice. That fragrance is called ‘Amplification.'”

“Amplification?” The uncle looked at me skeptically, then raised his arm to smell it. But the next second, I felt he became even angrier.

“I actually believed your nonsense…” He slowly stood up and walked toward the lady and me. “You think I’m not annoyed enough right now…? People died… people died, do you know that?!”

I was so afraid. I was really so afraid!

He felt just like Father!

He pushed the lady down with one hand and grabbed me by the collar, dragging me aside: “You think I won’t beat you?! Are you playing games with me, kid?!”

I was going to get hit…

“You fucking—!”

As soon as Uncle Wan opened his mouth for the next sentence, his voice suddenly became enormously loud. I felt like my ears were about to be deafened.

“What?”

He covered his mouth in disbelief, but the buzzing enormous sound still reverberated within the room.

The lady climbed up from the ground, pushed Uncle Wan away with one hand, then helped me up.

“Yingxiong, are you okay?” she asked.

“I’m fine… I’m fine…” My whole body was trembling.

After speaking, she looked at Uncle Wan again: “Brother Wan… just now you…?”

“I don’t know either…” Uncle Wan was somewhat dazed. He kept covering his mouth.

The lady checked my condition, then immediately went back to stand face-to-face with Uncle Wan: “Brother Wan, I don’t think you need to be like this… You went out to participate in a game and failed—theoretically it has nothing to do with Yingxiong at all. No matter what, you shouldn’t take it out on him.”

Uncle Wan didn’t pay any attention to the lady at all. He just kept touching his throat, then tentatively produced loud sounds. Sometimes he could succeed, and sometimes he couldn’t.

“Sound amplification…?” The uncle’s eyes widened. “This is ‘Amplification’…?”

After testing several times, he once again turned his gaze to me, then came to my side and gripped my shoulders forcefully.

“Kid… what does ‘Amplification’ mean?!”