Players, Please Board the Train

Urgent footsteps echoed through the exhibition hall, but the sound of hard objects scraping against the floor didn’t speed up, maintaining its original rhythm as it moved toward the hall. The contrast between fast and slow amplified the terrifying and eerie atmosphere.

Da Xiong rushed into the exhibition hall and looked up to see only two rows of dim yellow lights that could barely illuminate three feet in front of the pillars. In the vast art gallery, everything else was swallowed by darkness. Within the closed space, one could faintly hear sounds like strong wind passing through gaps, which then instantly transformed into the sound of flowing liquid!

A hand grabbed the wall at the room’s corner. Da Xiong glanced back before charging into the darkness, running toward the portrait that had been damaged during the day!

A tall, slender shadow emerged from the corridor and melted into the darkness, following Da Xiong’s escape route. After it disappeared into the darkness, two more shadows emerged from the left and right corridors respectively, entering the exhibition hall one after another.

Da Xiong chose the central wall of the exhibition hall, hiding himself in the darkness. Estimating he was close enough to the portrait, he slowed down and suddenly circled to the side of the pillar, immediately reaching out to grab the painting!

Just as his hand touched the frame, a game prompt suddenly appeared:

【Congratulations, player Concealer has found one counterfeit painting, completing this dungeon’s first task.】

Da Xiong’s smile, which hadn’t even fully formed, froze on his face. Meanwhile, the monster in the darkness roared furiously, wildly slashing and smashing things within the exhibition hall. The shadows positioned on both sides of the hall quickly retreated.

The Painting Woman, who had been floating above the art gallery, leisurely passed through the exhibition hall, circled around the pillar, and arrived at the spot where Da Xiong had just hidden. However, the area in front of the pillar was now completely empty.

Landing on the ground and looking around, she turned back and saw the flowers and plants in the landscape painting hanging on the pillar behind her gently moving. So she walked over...In the darkness, the monster’s low growls never ceased. Although the exhibition hall was already empty, it still lingered among the pillars, seemingly searching for something.

Having waited without the Painting Woman’s return, Xu Huo slightly pulled open the ajar door and slipped out of the room sideways. Grasping the piano wire to elevate himself, he moved toward the exhibition hall.

The darkness didn’t completely block vision. From his elevated position, Xu Huo could take in the entire art gallery and thus clearly see what the monster wandering in the darkness actually looked like.

Standing five to six meters tall, it had humanoid limbs and torso but with poor proportions. Its slender limbs somewhat resembled a mantis’s. When walking, its overly long feet would drag and scrape against the floor, producing that sound. Notably, a white elongated object was attached to its right arm, appearing to be some kind of cane.

A cane?

Xu Huo frowned slightly and looked toward the exhibition hall’s center. The statue that had stood there originally was gone, leaving only a plaster-covered cloth standing in its place!

Could the monster active in the art gallery at night actually be a statue?

From the Painting Woman and Yuan Yao’s mention of ”gods,” it was clear that some special items in dungeons possessed certain autonomous abilities. They could simply be items lost within dungeons or become dungeon bosses. The statue in the Hundred-Person Art Gallery was clearly the latter.

The moving monster stopped and suddenly turned to look in Xu Huo’s direction.

Xu Huo quickly hid behind a pillar. Just as he steadied himself against the pillar, the sound of hard objects scraping against the floor abruptly sounded right beside him. As a slender arm reached around the pillar from the side, he manipulated the piano wire to lift himself higher. When the monster leaned in to investigate, he circled around from the other side to its rear, hiding behind the next pillar.

Glancing sideways at the monster crouched over the pillar, he began searching through the exhibition hall. He quickly discovered a missing painting on a pillar to the right.

The missing painting should be the counterfeit taken by a player. During the day, a group photo had hung in this position.

From Da Xiong being attacked to entering the exhibition hall was actually only a few dozen seconds. Yet the player who completed the first task didn’t take a nearby painting but went to the central exhibition hall position to take a group photo. This indicated that besides needing to be taken after lights out, counterfeit paintings had a second condition.

Carefully avoiding the monster searching behind each pillar, Xu Huo reached the art gallery’s front entrance. The person in ”Still Time” hanging on the first pillar shifted their eyes sideways, and the hands originally folded across their chest lifted to gesture toward him.

His gaze lingered on the smiling face in the painting for a second before he crossed the exhibition hall to the left side, finding the torn woman’s portrait.

The person who actually tore this painting was Da Xiong. After Deng Yu disappeared, he remained the first player attacked by the monster. He escaped to the exhibition hall simply to try his luck—if he obtained a counterfeit painting, he could immediately leave the dungeon and be saved.

Spotting a few drops of blood on the ground, Xu Huo casually wiped them away, then removed the woman’s portrait.

【Congratulations, player Extra has discovered one counterfeit painting. Submit to complete the first task?】

【After submission, you will receive a return ticket and no less than a D-grade dungeon rating, while unlocking the second dungeon task.】

The woman’s face in the painting appeared somewhat distorted. A ghost image undulated around her outline, as if another face existed within the painting, simultaneously shouting something.

Even though obscured by the woman’s colors, Xu Huo still recognized that face as belonging to the previous player, Da Xiong.

So Deng Yu didn’t simply disappear—he was sucked into the painting?

Glancing back at ”Still Time,” which was staring intently at him, he suddenly realized that the living paintings here might very well be transformed players. During daytime, there were no counterfeits, but whoever saw moving paintings, besides reacting with fear and avoidance like Da Xiong, could consider another line of thinking—that the living paintings themselves were the counterfeits.

And if someone came to take paintings at night, the consequence would be getting sucked into the painting, becoming part of it, thus successfully completing a counterfeit painting!

”Bang!” Ten meters away, the monster suddenly smashed a painting frame.

Xu Huo immediately tucked the painting under his arm, grasped the piano wire, and circled around from the art gallery’s front entrance again. Before leaving, he looked toward the front door pillar, ignoring the angry expression of the man in the portrait but glancing at ”Silent Umbrella.” The shadow behind the umbrella remained tilted to the right, just as when he first entered the art gallery.

As the monster moved closer, he didn’t linger longer, turning back to his room.

The unlit room was pitch dark. After scanning the sofa area where Ni Tian lay, he returned to the bedside, put away his items, removed the disposable gloves, and placed the painting beside the cabinet.

He wasn’t in a hurry to submit the painting.

Deng Yu and Da Xiong had undoubtedly entered the paintings. The first player to complete the task, ”Concealer,” had their painting disappear after task submission. So submitting the task meant the game would collect the counterfeit painting, simultaneously trapping the players inside with no way out.

However, his hesitation wasn’t because of the players inside but because of the dungeon’s task trap.

In previous dungeons he’d completed, multiple tasks appeared simultaneously. But the Hundred-Person Art Gallery required submitting the first task before unlocking the second task. This indicated that submitting the previous task might impose restrictions on subsequent tasks.