Players, Please Board the Train

Unlike the outside which had simply been ransacked, the staff living quarters looked completely like a murder scene. Aside from the lack of bloodstains, the walls, floor, furnishings—anything that could be destroyed at a glance had been destroyed, including the androids. Their heads and limbs had all been dismembered.

”This is just psychopathic!” Wan Yunrong exclaimed. ”Even the androids were hacked to pieces. What kind of grudge is this?”

This wasn’t about a grudge. It was about looking for something. And not like the players searching for valuable items, but rather a targeted search for a relatively small object. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have bothered dismantling the androids’ limbs.

Xu Huo’s gaze swept over the faces of the other three present. ”Maybe there’s something good here.”

”Should we look too, then?” Wan Yunrong rubbed her hands together eagerly.

”Forget it. If there was really something good, would it still be waiting for us?” Chu Yuan wasn’t hopeful.

Wan Yunrong teased him, ”Didn’t that android in the cabinet just wait for you?”

Chu Yuan’s face darkened. ”If you’re going to look, hurry up and look! After we’re done, we go to the next floor!”

The group searched the room once over. Indeed, they didn’t find anything worth taking. Miao Yu even pried up some wall tiles in the corner, but the exposed ground underneath was the same as the other broken areas.

Players who had gone through ten or more dungeons had developed a set routine for dealing with dungeon environments. Besides checking visible items, they also had specialized detectors or detection items to find things completely hidden on the surface.Mao Wei, Ge Pan, and the others who went ahead were already using theirs.

”With so many rooms, we could search until dark and still not finish,” Chu Yuan said, glancing at them. ”And they’re not the only clever ones.”

Miao Yu and the previously enthusiastic Wan Yunrong headed towards the next room first. Chu Yuan was about to leave too, but the rope in his hand suddenly pulled taut. He turned back to look at the person holding a torn painting. ”Is there something wrong with the painting?”

It was a painting in a dark, gothic style. The canvas was mostly covered in black paint, depicting a low-angle view looking up at a pitch-black window. On the window was a lighter-colored handprint.

”The artist’s skill isn’t that great,” Chu Yuan commented.

Xu Huo casually set the painting aside and went to check other rooms.

Across so many rooms, besides daily necessities, the most frequently appearing items were androids and similar paintings. Some of the paintings had been destroyed, but they could still be viewed with simple reassembly.

Some of these paintings had color, others didn’t. They weren’t signed, but they were likely from the same artist. Even the colored ones had a very dirty, muddy quality. A normal person’s first glance would find them uncomfortable, not something you’d want to stare at for long.

Xu Huo’s action of examining the paintings caught the attention of several players. They shifted their focus to the paintings one after another, but after finding nothing of value, they discarded them and moved on.

Chu Yuan was getting impatient. ”Haven’t you looked enough?”

He had asked Xu Huo several times if he had noticed anything, but Xu Huo ignored him.

”Don’t you think these paintings suit the atmosphere here perfectly?” Xu Huo said.

”Yeah, equally creepy and ghostly,” Wan Yunrong said, touching the bead bracelet on her wrist.

”Wait,” Chu Yuan suddenly said. ”These paintings were hung up a long time ago, right? Before the lab staff left. The lab definitely wasn’t like this back then. Why would everyone hang such paintings in their rooms? There must be a hint! Let me look again!”

He snatched the painting from Xu Huo’s hands and stared intently at the terrifying dark shadow within.

”That’s not strange,” Miao Yu said nonchalantly. ”The Deep Blue Laboratory is on an isolated island. Look at all those rooms with dual-purpose androids; you know there probably weren’t many women either. Doing boring, high-intensity work... it’s too normal for their minds to get messed up.”

”And these paintings are mostly done by the same person. If that person was a supervisor, it’s not hard to understand hanging so many paintings.”

”You could have just said that last sentence,” Chu Yuan said, swiftly tossing the painting aside. ”Mao Wei and the others have gone to the third underground floor. We should hurry too.”

The four of them moved towards the nearest elevator. Just as they approached, the elevator came up from below. Chu Yuan was lamenting being a step too late, but unexpectedly, when the elevator doors opened, the seven people who had gone down came back up. Wu Xiaonan and Zhu Rumin rushed out of the elevator first, coughing and wiping white powder off their faces.

Xu Huo and the other three instinctively stepped back. Only then did they see the interior of the elevator was covered in a layer of frosty white powder. Mao Wei, Ge Pan, and the others were all more or less covered in the powder. Aside from Mao Wei, who had been wearing a mask the whole time, the others had inhaled some of it.

”This stuff isn’t poisonous, is it?!” Chu Yuan immediately put on his gas mask.

Xu Huo, Wan Yunrong, and Miao Yu didn’t lag behind either.

Mao Wei and the others had already used antidotes immediately. Ge Pan had a blood detection item. After waiting a few minutes, he checked his own blood and, confirming it was fine, finally relaxed.

”What happened down there?” Miao Yu asked only then.

”Didn’t see clearly,” Ge Pan said. ”As soon as the elevator doors opened, a lot of dust blew in. There was a rotten smell.”

”The third underground floor has a mutated plant cultivation room. Could it be that the plants withered?” Xu Huo guessed.

”That’s possible,” Gan Qing said. ”But I think it’s better not to go down. We can’t guarantee all the mutated plants are dead.”

They were lucky they only got a face full of powder.

”The third underground floor should only have about one-third of its area dedicated to cultivating mutated plants,” Miao Yu said. ”We can take another elevator down.”

”You guys go if you want. I’m not going,” Wu Xiaonan said, waving her hand upon hearing this. Zhu Rumin beside her, supporting each other, hesitantly said, ”I’ll pass too. We were just lucky earlier. What if it was toxic gas or powder...”

Actually, they had all prepared protective suits before coming. But the suits were meant for mining ore. Who would have thought that after landing on the island, they wouldn’t even see a shadow of ore, so they didn’t take it seriously.

Of course, there was also an element of relying on their evolution. Evolution wasn’t just about enhanced physique; poison resistance improved too.

The players who still wanted to go down now changed into their protective suits. Wan Yunrong asked Xu Huo why he wasn’t changing. ”Chu Yuan is going down. Aren’t you?”

The two were tied together, and since Chu Yuan was taking the lead in action, he definitely had to go down.

”He’s been wearing a protective suit the whole time,” Chu Yuan said with a curl of his lip. ”A close-fitting one.”

Xu Huo gave a simple, honest smile. After putting on his protective mask, he said, ”I’m afraid of dying.”

Some players looked disdainful, others serious, but no one paid him further attention.

Zhu Rumin, Wu Xiaonan, and Chang Chengyong decided to stay behind. The remaining eight people entered another elevator.

As Miao Yu said, taking a different elevator down, they didn’t encounter any powder. However, the lights on this floor didn’t automatically turn on like they did on the upper two floors.

Chu Yuan set up a lighting lamp. The strong light pierced through the darkness, instantly illuminating something resembling a small hill not far away.