Players, Please Board the Train

Mao Wei walked out from the shadows, separated by the number grid on the floor, and said, ”How did you know it was me?”

”From the items you use—the fluff mass grenade, the toy pistol—they’re all children’s toys. Hopscotch is also a children’s game,” Xu Huo said.

”Just based on that?” Mao Wei didn’t believe it.

Chu Yuan was even more astonished than him. ”You’re the ghost?”

”Correct. It just so happens I saw you two fighting with Dr. Deng’s people earlier,” Mao Wei said with a laugh. ”This time you can’t blame me. You have to kill someone to regain a human identity. Sorry, but you’ll have to be the ones to suffer.”

As he spoke, he walked towards the two of them.

Chu Yuan kept trying to lift his feet in place, but aside from the next sequential square, he couldn’t enter any other square. His feet were completely glued to the ground.

In the darkness, Xu Huo took out the item Madame Butterfly had given him, the ”Constraining Star Sphere.” He said to the approaching Mao Wei, ”Actually, you don’t know whether you’re the ghost or not.”

”The reason you’re here is because you targeted me and Chu Yuan. Whether you’re the ghost or not, you planned to kill us,” Xu Huo said. ”If I’m guessing correctly, it started from the train, didn’t it?”

Mao Wei stopped walking. ”That’s about right. But I’m afraid trying to use this to stall for time won’t work.”As he spoke, he stretched a white silk thread taut between his hands. With a flick of his right hand, one end of the thread shot towards Xu Huo, piercing his eyeball and drilling into his brain.

Mao Wei chuckled darkly. ”I’ve used this kite string to catch whales before.”

Xu Huo, who was trembling from having his eyeball pierced, suddenly looked at him sideways. ”Whales? Paper-mâché ones?”

Mao Wei froze, then hurriedly retreated. At that moment, he heard someone speaking behind him. ”Take a look. Do you still have anything in your hand?”

It was Xu Huo’s voice. Mao Wei recognized it. However, Xu Huo should have been standing in front of him, maintaining that sideways glance... The kite string in his hand suddenly vanished. Xu Huo, who had been fixed in the grid, suddenly walked out and approached him.

Mao Wei kept opening and closing his hands, but after several seconds, his palms remained empty. Realizing something was wrong, he turned to run, only to bump into an invisible wall. Looking down, he saw the numbers from the grid he had laid out fly out, entangling his feet, his legs, then climbing to his waist. And Xu Huo was still approaching, reaching a hand towards his face.

”Get away!” In Mao Wei’s field of vision, Xu Huo, who maintained that sideways glance, clearly wasn’t focusing his gaze on him now. Yet the man stood stiffly right in front of him. His hands first touched his mask, then changed to stabbing into his right eye!

”Ahhhh!” Mao Wei screamed in agony, wildly throwing punches to knock the Xu Huo in front of him down.

The sideways-glancing Xu Huo fell to the ground as lightly as a piece of paper. Then, the eyeball in his hand automatically rolled to its socket, squeezed in, and a kite string slowly grew from the center of the pupil. The kite string swayed, and the paper man stood up. That face gradually transformed into Mao Wei’s likeness, only without the mask—an ugly visage with a wide grin revealing large yellow teeth, laughing shamelessly.

Veins bulged on Mao Wei’s forehead. He pounced, tearing the paper man to shreds. But the next second, a short bloody line suddenly appeared on his back, right over his heart. Blood then sprayed out, and he could only lie on the ground, convulsing.

”What’s wrong with him?” Chu Yuan looked in shock at the man lying at Xu Huo’s feet, about to breathe his last. ”He threw a bunch of wild punches in place for no reason, then pounced in front of you so you could kill him?”

”Maybe he wasn’t mentally stable to begin with,” Xu Huo said, shaking the blood off his Crimson Sword. The Constraining Star Sphere’s effect was better than he imagined. After being beaten up by Madame Butterfly several times, he smoothly performed mental suppression on Mao Wei. Though he got tricked again—Madame Butterfly didn’t tell him that after using the Constraining Star Sphere, the user must remain completely motionless in place.

The item’s description didn’t mention that either.

”Do I look like an idiot to you?” Chu Yuan patted his own face.

”Quite a bit,” Xu Huo said seriously, then added, ”Otherwise, we wouldn’t be standing here.”

Chu Yuan shuddered, looking at him in shock. ”After going through life and death together, I already consider you a brother!”

”Thanks,” Xu Huo said. After receiving Mao Wei’s items, he discovered that the hopscotch grid wasn’t his characteristic, but an item. He took it out.

This item took the form of a map. It could release numbered squares according to a certain size. It couldn’t trap players anywhere, anytime. It could only be successfully deployed within the area where the grid was spread if there were absolutely no people present. The ”counting game” would only trigger if someone walked into it.

As for Mao Wei being able to lay the grid on the path they might take, it wasn’t as he claimed—that he witnessed the fight in the corridor. It was done through a positioning item shaped like a handkerchief—the one he used to wipe his gun. The trigger method was to ask someone if they needed help.

As long as the person asked responded, in any form, they would be located.

These two items were quite interesting.

”Mao Wei came specifically to kill us, never expecting to deliver a free kill,” Chu Yuan said, kicking the corpse aside. He added, ”Ge Pan and the others should thank us. Otherwise, they might have been the targets. They came up together earlier.”

”They might not thank you, but they probably really want to kill you,” Xu Huo said calmly. ”Mao Wei, Ge Pan, and Zhu Rumin definitely know each other.”

Chu Yuan’s mouth fell open. ”Why? How can you tell?”

”When the players searched the first basement level during the day, Zhu Rumin hadn’t gone to the third basement level yet. At that time, Mao Wei and Ge Pan proactively suggested guarding the corridor instead of searching rooms one by one. The two of them just stood there in the corridor. Unless they were blind, they would have seen Zhu Rumin.”

”How do you know Zhu Rumin went to the third basement level at that time?” Chu Yuan couldn’t help but press.

Xu Huo glanced at him but didn’t elaborate. The two flying surveillance devices he released didn’t capture any people, but they did capture footprints in front of the elevator, precisely during the daytime search of the first basement level. A fresh pair of women’s footprints appeared on the third basement level’s floor covered in white dust.

Chu Yuan didn’t get his explanation, but he instinctively believed his words. ”Three out of twelve people are accomplices? They might even be teamed up with others. Is this really a dungeon? How many proper players are even left?”

Xu Huo didn’t say much more. The two of them lurked around the elevator, avoiding any possible high-level players, and soon ran into Gan Qing.

The moment Gan Qing saw the alcohol barrel in Xu Huo’s hand, he raged, ”So the explosion earlier was your doing! What good does blowing this place up do you? Planning to take all the other players down with you?!”

Neither Xu Huo nor Chu Yuan made a sound. They just stared behind him.

Gan Qing noticed their strange looks and turned around, just in time to see a disheveled Ghostly Shadow standing behind the glass window of a room. However, it vanished in the blink of an eye.

”The Ghostly Shadow has appeared!” Gan Qing’s voice rose sharply. He immediately rushed over and opened the door, bumping right into Wan Yunrong, who was about to come out. She looked at him with disdain. ”No need to get so excited about entering the female staff dormitory.”