Players, Please Board the Train

The night was deep and dark. The electrical circuits in the Little Flower Red Red building were damaged and couldn’t provide lighting. The people hiding in the office were afraid of provoking the Mutated Animals, so they didn’t dare use their phones for illumination either. Everyone just sat there in the darkness, staring wide-eyed, waiting for the game to end.

”It’s almost four o’clock,” Jiang Yihua whispered with some excitement.

”Can you see the energy value of the poisonous powder?” Xu Huo suddenly asked.

”No, it needs to be a living object at the very least,” Jiang Yihua paused, ”Do you want to return to the thirteenth floor to get that potted flower?”

Xu Huo didn’t say anything and got up to leave the room.

The Mutants outside had long fallen silent. He covered his mouth and nose with torn cloth, opened the elevator door, and jumped in.

The thirteenth floor was covered in a thin layer of golden powder. The ventilation ducts had been punctured, replaced by over a dozen twisted plant roots and stems. The overturned potted plants scattered around had almost all withered.

The small purple flower he had previously bagged in a plastic bag and placed in the corner, though its petals were coated with plenty of poisonous powder, had not withered and died.

Brushing off the poisonous powder, he picked up the plastic bag just as he received the game notification:

[Congratulations, player Extra, on successfully clearing the ”Little Flower Red Red Building” dungeon. Based on your performance in this dungeon, you will receive the new characteristic ”Fifty-Fifty,” the item ”Nutritious Little Red Pot,” and six potions.][Please note, this dungeon is a Random Dungeon and cannot contribute to player rating.]

[Leave dungeon?]

[Yes]

[No]

After choosing to leave the dungeon, the world before his eyes abruptly changed back to that foggy highway. In the distance, he could see police tape and the flashing red lights of police cars, along with faint glimpses of numerous figures. The phone he had tossed by the roadside was still there.

Players were continuously returning from the dungeon, and the surroundings grew noisy. Just as he planned to leave, someone gently tapped his shoulder from behind.

The Painting Woman tilted her head as she emerged from the side and quickly typed out a line: ”Your stepdad is over by the car.”

Xu Huo nodded, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and used the fog as cover to slip away.

Back home, he first drank two bottles of healing potion to alleviate some of the pain before taking off his clothes to inspect his injuries.

Kicked twice by that Mutant, although his ribs weren’t broken, large bruises covered his chest and abdomen, which were now somewhat swollen.

The Painting Woman went and brought back a bag of ice. She had him lie down, spread the ice over his chest, and used her phone to say, ”You’re so pitiful.”

Xu Huo pointed at the flower in the plastic bag, ”Do you recognize it?”

The Painting Woman shook her head, then typed: ”But I’ve seen the same kind before. However, the leaves on other people’s flowers were all red.”

”What about the size?”

”About the same size.”

”Where have you seen it?”

”I don’t remember either,” the Painting Woman shook her head again. ”I’m asleep a lot of the time.”

From her usual fragmented comments, Xu Huo knew the Painting Woman had followed many people and been to many places. But her mobile form was a painting. During travels, she was mostly stored in an item slot or carried in paper form. She didn’t handle affairs nor remember things well; it didn’t matter to her who she followed or where she went.

Seeing he couldn’t get more information, he set the matter aside for now and said, ”Get me something to eat. No snacks.”

The Painting Woman happily went off and returned with a bowl of congee and a large bag of snacks. She gave him the plain congee and sat beside him, hugging the snacks and eating them herself.

Xu Huo glanced at her, dumped the remaining ice into the trash, ate his meal, and then checked the rewards from this dungeon.

”Fifty-Fifty” was an extension characteristic of ”Informer’s Perspective”:

[Keen insight and observational skills are essential hard requirements for being an informer, but wild intuition is also indispensable.]

[Science shows that intuition is the brain’s implicit feedback based on all information received. To humans, it seems baseless, but to the brain, it is the result of precise computation.]

[However, any computation can err, and so can intuition. Therefore, in dangerous situations, the ”Fifty-Fifty” intuition will have a fifty percent accuracy rate.]

[Note: The accuracy rate of an ordinary person’s intuition is less than 20%.]

Comparing the two data points, the ”Fifty-Fifty” characteristic seemed quite good.

He also agreed that intuition is the brain’s filtered feedback on information. If ”Fifty-Fifty” could truly achieve the high accuracy rate it claimed, this characteristic was more like a form of brain evolution.

However, Fifty-Fifty also had a fifty percent error rate. In practical situations, choosing right or wrong had absolute consequences.

Moving past the characteristic, he took out the ”Nutritious Little Red Pot.”

This item was simply a flower pot. However, it could supply all the nutrients a plant needed for growth without requiring fertilization; it only needed occasional watering.

Xu Huo took the small purple flower out of the plastic bag and planted it.

This plant was mixed among other plants and couldn’t be killed by the Man-eating Flower’s poisonous powder. Although there was no record of it in the glass greenhouse, it probably wasn’t planted there by chance.

Because the game introduction mentioned that the first mutated plant cultivated by Professor Hao did not bloom red flowers, he had considered that Professor Hao might be colorblind, and that the Man-eating Flower was the source of the building’s name. But actually, this guess might not be correct.

If Professor Hao were colorblind, then painting the two doors connecting the glass greenhouse to the building different colors would be completely unnecessary.

Of course, just based on two painted doors, one couldn’t definitively conclude he wasn’t colorblind.

But adding this small purple flower into the mix, the game’s introduction seemed to carry a different meaning.

The roots of the small purple flower were red, but the blooms were purple. The Painting Woman said she had seen the same kind of flower with leaves that were all red. Furthermore, when he was cleaning the soil just now, he noticed the red portion on the flower’s roots had decreased significantly compared to in the dungeon; the color had clearly changed.

This aligned with the naming origin of the Little Flower Red Red Building.

This small purple flower was, at the very least, a special type of mutated plant. So, even though the game labeled it as an ”Unknown Plant,” he still brought the flower out.

After potting the flower, he took a nutrient solution and poured it in.

Besides the characteristic and the item, the potions among the game rewards included, aside from the P1 Evolution Serum, Grade D healing potions, cleaning solution, and several plant nutrient solutions.

He only brought out a single plant, yet the game provided both the pot and the supplies.

Just as he placed the flower pot on the balcony, Team Leader Wu called. ”You ran off pretty fast. We specifically went to block people near the dungeon entrance but didn’t catch you.”

”I had something to attend to,” Xu Huo said, then paused. ”Is there something you need?”

”I know the basic situation of this dungeon now. Everyone who came out, whether players or non-players, needs psychological counseling. Would you look into...”

”No need,” Xu Huo replied.

”Actually, Tang Guangbo is quite capable. If you have any issues, you can talk to him,” Team Leader Wu said, then paused before adding, ”Two players who should have made it out this time are missing. The other players aren’t clear on what happened. I wanted to ask you.”