Spinal Perpetual Motion

On the brink of death, Chu Zheng is dragged into the Spinal Arena.

Here, human lives are currency, and spinal bones are weapons.

Losers have their spines ripped out alive and forged into armor for the winners. In the end, the winners become the iron lining of someone else’s new armor.

From the start, Chu Zheng melts down three of his own vertebrae: “Betting our lives? I’m staking all 206 of my bones!”

As the audience wagers a million points on the “Mad Dog Zheng,” no one knows:

The mountain of a hundred corpses he faces alone hides the vertebrae forged into a heartguard for his mother;

The dungeon boss he cleaves open has a necklace of his sister’s carbonized finger bones embedded in its abdomen.

At the final stage, the System reveals the ultimate wager:

[Trade your spinal bones for your family’s resurrection!]

But Chu Zheng splits the deal screen with an axe: “Trade your mother, ”

His spine suddenly bursts out as steel cables and wraps around the System’s avatar. “I forged my whole family’s bones... into the handle of the axe I’ll use to kill you!”