Players, Please Board the Train

With a loud bang, sand flew everywhere. A scorpion with a cold, metallic sheen in the sunlight flew out from within and landed on the sand several meters away.

”Gold Sand Scorpion, a mutated scorpion. It likes to devour metal and won’t actively attack humans.” Ai Jia signaled Xu Huo and Wan Tingfang not to be nervous. After watching She Ping kill several Gold Sand Scorpions that were as long as a person, he said, ”There seem to be an unusual number of scorpions today. I’ll go check the vehicle’s protective measures.”

”Is there anything I can help with?” Xu Huo followed him.

Ai Jia didn’t refuse his offer, gesturing for him to follow while telling Wan Tingfang to stay by Shi Youzhi’s side and not wander off.

The two of them circled the vehicle to inspect it. Xu Huo asked with slight confusion, ”Aren’t there measures to prevent Gold Sand Scorpions?”

”Of course there are,” Ai Jia replied. ”Our transport vehicles have special frequency-based protection. Humans can’t sense it, but mutated animals, once they’ve evolved to a certain degree, will actively avoid this frequency. However, you can’t guarantee there won’t be one or two particularly clever mutated animals.”

Ai Jia was still speaking when he suddenly sank into the sand, as if being violently dragged down by something. In an instant, only his shoulders remained above ground!

Xu Huo, who was only two meters away, immediately lunged forward to rescue him, but only managed to grab his jacket. The sand had already swallowed the spot where Ai Jia stood. At the same time, over a dozen funnel-shaped quicksand vortices appeared on the nearby ground. Grabbing his piano wire, Xu Huo flipped onto the train and shouted a warning to Shi Youzhi and the others, ”Ai Jia is gone!”

Right then, a large number of quicksand vortices began appearing around the transport truck, and the vehicle started sinking from the rear.

”Protect the repair device!” Shi Youzhi ordered. He took out a vine and tapped it in the air towards the three transport vehicles. The vehicles then broke free from the vortices and slowly began to levitate.By now, the Track Supply Department personnel had split into two groups. Half entered the station, with one member tossing out a transparent square box. The box tumbled on the ground, its volume rapidly swelling until it became a giant box slightly smaller than the station, encasing him and the three repair devices inside the station. The other seven remained outside the box on guard.

Meanwhile, Shi Youzhi’s group of seven split up and boarded the three transport vehicles. After activating the autopilot, a female crew member raised a bubble machine twice a person’s height and quickly blew three soap bubbles towards the sky.

Once formed, these soap bubbles flew towards the transport vehicles, gently enveloping each one. The people inside the vehicles couldn’t touch the bubbles, only feeling a light breeze pass by.

However, an item used as a defensive measure was certainly not low-grade. Xu Huo stepped back to make room for the Supply Department personnel and saw another member pouring an ink-like liquid onto the ground.

The liquid floated on the surface of the sand the moment it touched down. In the blink of an eye, it covered a large area around the station, turning the yellow sand into a stretch of black water. This water surface was almost completely still, making any disturbance exceptionally conspicuous.

Xu Huo spotted at least seven points where ripples appeared.

”At least seven targets,” She Ping said to Shi Youzhi. ”They’re after the repair device. Do we engage?”

”Wait for Ai Jia,” Shi Youzhi said calmly. ”This is our territory.”

The three giant soap bubbles had completely enveloped the transport vehicles when several long arrows made of sand suddenly shot out from within the black water. They soared into the sky at incredible speed, pierced through the clouds floating above the desert area, and then swiftly descended. At their terminal velocity, a shockwave barrier even formed around the arrowheads!

”Run!” Wan Tingfang instinctively cried out. But looking back and seeing Shi Youzhi and the others unmoved, she gritted her teeth, retreated further towards the vehicle to avoid the impact points of the sand arrows, and took out a protective item to hold in front of her.

Instead of moving away from Shi Youzhi and his team, Xu Huo actually took two steps closer.

The Track Supply Department members handled the situation with composure. Either they already knew something would happen, or they frequently encountered such sudden situations. In terms of experience, they were the experts; in terms of items, they were superior. Right now, in this place, nowhere was safer than by their side!

This proved true. The sand arrows arrived with ferocious force, but upon hitting the soap bubbles, their power was dissipated. The arrow shafts, wrapped by the indented bubble walls, were ground several times before reverting to sand.

*Crunch, crunch...* The soap bubbles made a sound like chewing. After a few moments, they slowly returned to their original shape, not a single one ruptured. The transport vehicles and the people on them suffered no harm whatsoever.

”That’s just too powerful!” Wan Tingfang blurted out. But before her words faded, the sand that was supposed to be spat out by the bubbles suddenly began multiplying, spreading over the soap bubbles like bacteria. In the blink of an eye, it formed a thick layer coating the outside!

”Collect!” She Ping threw a dropper outwards. The object was only as long as a hand, but once it squeezed through the soap bubble, it stuck to the outside and began voraciously sucking up the sand!

The sand that was about to completely envelop the bubble quickly shrank back by half. However, the other two vehicles weren’t so fortunate. The items used by their crews failed to work, and they were instantly wrapped into sand spheres. The soap bubbles meant to protect them had instead become a barrier trapping them inside!

”Inside-out flip!” The female crew member who blew the bubbles reached out and made a grabbing motion in the air towards the two vehicles. A hole immediately tore open at the top of each sand sphere. The soap bubbles inside flipped outward, turning completely inside out from top to bottom, scooping all the sand inside before bursting open beneath the vehicles.

A massive amount of sand fell back to the ground, but the two transport vehicles also lost their protective barriers. The people or things hiding beneath the sand seemed to have been waiting for this exact opportunity. Two mechanical hands, each easily over ten meters long, reached out from the black water. They clasped together from high above, pressing down on one of the transport vehicles, crushing it towards the ground!

”Up!” With the help of another crew member, the one who poured the black water inverted himself to hang upside down near the ground. He took out a broom-like item and stirred the black water. The black liquid covering the desert surface rapidly retracted, instantly coating the two metal hands. With a forceful twist, a loud *creak, creak* sound echoed as the metal hands and the transport vehicle crashed back to the ground together, sending up huge waves of sand!

At that moment, an explosion occurred not far from where the transport vehicle fell. Ai Jia, who had vanished into the desert earlier, flew out. He was holding a dog leash, and at the other end of the leash was actually a living person!

However, the moment the two of them appeared, the person caught by the dog leash vanished into thin air!

”He used a train ticket to escape!” She Ping said with anger. ”These players who do nothing decent!”

”There are still three people below,” Ai Jia said as he returned to a transport vehicle. He glanced towards the station, his brow furrowing. ”Could it be they aren’t after the repair device after all?”

Everyone present shared the same thought. The only thing of high value and irreplaceable here was the track repair device. The game technology is monopolized; even if some game partitions could produce it, the game itself wouldn’t allow it. Setting up an ambush and surrounding them logically should be for this thing. But from the appearance of the Gold Sand Scorpions until now, the station itself hadn’t suffered the slightest disturbance!