Players, Please Board the Train

No sooner had the words fallen than the sound of metal hitting the floor rang out nearby. Everyone turned and saw a middle-aged man frantically picking up a handle-like object from the ground, babbling, “I didn’t know it would break… I only touched it by accident…”

Brother Tie and the others cursed, edging closer cautiously while still keeping some distance. Only after confirming it was just a decorative handle on the tin chest did he snap, “Haven’t you seen horror movies? You don’t touch things in dangerous places—if you touch them you die. Do you know what dead people are called? Cannon fodder! Terrible teammates!”

The middle-aged man was too shamed to lift his head. Out of the corner of his eye he stared at the tin chest behind Brother Tie and suddenly widened his eyes. “I-It’s… moving!”

Brother Tie immediately turned around and saw the center of the tin chest bulge and flatten again, as if something inside was shifting.

Someone swallowed audibly—“gulp.”

Wei Bin suddenly said, “What do you think could be kept in a two-meter specimen tank like that?”

“Not a person, right?” Xiao Ba asked fearfully.

At the same time, Xu Huo and the others—Dai Wenqian, Gu Yu, and a few more—had already grabbed their item-weapons. Xu Huo called out, “Everyone, fall back toward the elevator. Don’t shove—walk slowly. Don’t touch the tin chests.”

The quickest to react were Brother Tie and his group; in a few strides they were behind Dai Wenqian and the others. The rest, seeing them run, panicked about being left behind and pressed backward as well.

In the jostling, the tin chests were inevitably bumped. At first there were single “thuds” and “bangs” as the metal flexed, then the impacts slowly increased—like a heartbeat—with each tin chest answering the others, and the sounds grew louder. By the time everyone had crowded back in front of the elevator, more than one spot on the tin chests was bulging and collapsing, as if something was pounding from within; multiple swellings had appeared on the surfaces!“Thud!”

Within minutes, the whole floor resonated with that sound, and as time passed the pounding became louder and more frequent.

“Could there be monsters inside?” Jiang Yihua, hiding behind Da Zhi, stared at the nearby tin chests.

“It’d be better if it were monsters,” Dai Wenqian said. “Monsters kept in tanks aren’t as scary as human Mutants.”

If there were human Mutants in those tin chests, they wouldn’t be for breeding—they’d be kept under control for study. Valuable Mutants, sealed in metal chests—clearly not ordinary specimens.

“The tin chests are made of special material; they shouldn’t be that easy to break,” Gu Yu tried to reassure everyone. “You saw—the chests returned to their original shape…”

No sooner had she finished than a tin chest a few meters away was torn open. With the spray of a bloody, foul-smelling liquid, a snowy-white arm reached out!

The white arm flexed, the long sharp nails hooked the edge of the rupture, and it slowly tore the tin chest wider.

A torrent of fluid poured out, and then a naked woman tumbled free.

She lay on the ground with her back to the group; her long black hair covered most of her back, and where her lower body should have been was a colorful, shimmering fish tail!

“Mermaid!”

Even though the players were somewhat braced for deadly fights, they couldn’t help but be surprised. No one expected the creature to appear in that form.

The mermaid began to sob.

“She’s so pitiful…” Da Zhi said without thinking.

Jiang Yihua pinched him, and before she could say anything, Xu Huo darted forward. She was about to stop him when she saw him fling several paper-like sheets and then kick the sobbing “mermaid” over!

The mermaid was knocked down; when her palms, arms, and tail brushed the papers, the sheets curled up and stuck to her skin. Every time she tried to prop herself up with her tail or hands she slid and fell again.

After falling face-down several times in a row, the mermaid seemed to give up and lay on the ground wailing.

“Aren’t we going too far? She can’t even walk,” someone murmured.

No one answered. Mermaids in children’s stories are sympathetic and beautiful, but this thing was something else entirely.

“Look up,” Xu Huo said from two or three meters away to the figure on the ground. “Or I’ll set you on fire. Your scales will look great when they burn.”

The mermaid stayed prone and kept crying.

“She might be mentally regressed,” Dai Wenqian approached and said softly, “Don’t be afraid. We don’t mean you harm. We won’t hurt you…”

Before he finished, the mermaid on the ground suddenly lifted her head. Below a pair of protruding eyes was a maw full of fangs. When she opened her mouth, the grin split almost to her ears—the tongue root and throat were clearly visible!

She lunged at Dai Wenqian’s throat!

Dai Wenqian leaned back and casually threw a small glass vial into her mouth.

Crash! The glass shattered, the liquid spilled out and began to bubble. The mermaid clutched her mouth and throat, desperately trying to scrape the contents out, but the liquid had already corroded her tongue and gums. Blood mixed with saliva and teeth fell onto the ground.

She made pained whimpering sounds and scrabbled backward across the floor, but she was stuck with quite a bit of ground sticker, so she moved slowly, only managing to drag herself about a meter away while the two people who had just harmed her remained within striking distance.

There was an animalistic fear in her eyes.

“How ugly!” Jiang Yihua came closer, pursed her lips, and said, “Definitely a Mutant.”

“She used to be human,” Gu Yu hesitated, looking at the thing on the ground that could no longer be called human. “How could she turn into this?”

Mutants, even if altered, usually retain a largely human appearance. Even with degeneration, legs don’t typically become a fish tail!

Dai Wenqian pointed at the seam marks around the mermaid’s waist. “A man-made mermaid.”

Gu Yu found it hard to accept. “Are people in the game world all insane?”

“Turning humans into Mutants is already tragic—doing experiments like this on them?” someone said.

“What’s the point of experiments like this?”

“For exhibition, maybe,” Xu Huo said, lighting a cigarette and taking a deep drag before adding, “This mermaid used to be a man.”

Everyone present widened their eyes and looked—though the face was unrecognizable, the body still revealed it was indeed a real man.

Wei Bin pressed his hand to his forehead. “I can’t. My worldview is collapsing.”

“Is Little Flower Red Red Building this kind of place?” Xiao Ba from the back asked. “No wonder it was abandoned.”

Xu Huo tugged at the corner of his mouth and stayed silent. Dai Wenqian said, “Whether the building was abandoned or not has nothing to do with the experiments. The game allows this kind of dungeon to exist—that’s an implicit acknowledgment.”

“We’ve only been through a few dungeons. There might be even more cruel things waiting ahead.”