Players, Please Board the Train

However, this was merely a prelude. The Mutants, who had been lured onto the train by the lights, had not directly attacked it before. But after the carriage ruptured, those Mutants seemed to be awakened by the genuine light and began frantically smashing the train windows!

The relatively sturdy window glass didn’t hold up for long under the Mutants’ assault. Within seconds, the windows of several carriages shattered in unison!

The Mutants madly tore at the scroll item deployed by Vivi’s parents. It looked like countless grotesque figures desperately struggling against a thin membrane, a sight both horrifying and shocking, yet they failed to rip through the item.

Carriage Two was much more stable, as what blocked the outside was a layer of metal. Apart from that initial impact, the Mutants currently couldn’t tear through the metal, merely leaving some scratch marks outside.

The players within these two carriages remained relatively calm, not thrown into complete disarray by the Mutant horde. The only one truly frightened was Dr. Deng, who cowered behind Xu Huo, repeatedly calling out Laurence Li’s name, trying to curry favor across the carriages and get him to lend a hand.

Vivi sneered coldly, ”Laurence Li is notoriously known for killing based on his whims. He’d help you? It’d be good if he doesn’t find you noisy and come out to kill you!”

However, what no one expected was that Laurence Li actually made a move. In the blink of an eye, all those frenzied, howling Mutants fell silent. The sound was replaced by a torrential downpour of liquid splattering against the scroll. From inside the carriage, they could see the scroll was completely stained red!

”Thank you! Thank you!” Dr. Deng shouted gratefully.

”Going through the trouble of luring the Mutants here just to kill them... isn’t that a bit... pointless effort!” Vivi blurted out after a brief hesitation.

What she wanted to say echoed the thoughts of the others, but no one dared to voice it openly.”Mr. Li, there’s no need for further probing at this point,” said a man with a neck tattoo among the escorts in Carriage Two, stepping forward towards the front of the train. ”No matter how many Mutants you lure, you won’t deplete our items by much. Backed by Stellar Pharmaceuticals, we transport personnel have an endless supply of items.”

After speaking, he waited for Laurence Li’s reply, but half a minute passed with no response.

Perhaps feeling a bit awkward, the tattooed man raised his voice again, ”Why not confront us directly? To avoid wasting everyone’s time!”

The air remained his only reply.

”Pfft!” Vivi let out an unceremonious laugh, drawing a cold glare from the tattooed man. The moment their eyes met, the tattooed man suddenly reached out, grabbing at the air before his face and crushing a smoke-like insect that vanished into nothingness. He then stretched his hand towards Vivi with a cold smile...

”I think everyone should calm down a bit? Don’t you all want to know Laurence Li’s objective?” Xu Huo spoke quickly, also making the tattooed man, who intended to deal with him as well, pause his hand.

”You know?”

”I can guess,” Xu Huo smiled slightly. ”If his goal were your carried items, he wouldn’t need to lure Mutants here. Ordinary Mutants wouldn’t be a match for you all anyway. It’s not like he lacks strength and needs to whittle down your combat power in advance.”

”Makes sense,” Vivi chimed in from the side. ”Then why did he come? To kill people?”

”Perhaps for the Mutants,” Xu Huo said.

”Mutants?” Everyone looked puzzled, only Dr. Deng asked, ”What value do Mutants have?”

”Can’t just be killing for fun,” Vivi added.

”Of course not,” Xu Huo said. ”Turning on the lights and music were both methods to attract Mutants. He must be searching for a specific type of Mutant.”

An empty train alone couldn’t attract too many Mutants. In fact, they had undoubtedly played the role of decoys. But Xu Huo’s statement about Laurence Li’s true objective was merely a casual remark; it would be better if it could stabilize these two groups.

”What kind of Mutant?” the tattooed man pressed.

”That, I don’t know,” Xu Huo said. ”Judging by common sense, it should be related to his legs. After all, once strength reaches a certain level, good items or good characteristics don’t hold much significance.”

”There’s a method to treat evolution side effects on Mutants’ bodies?” Dr. Deng expressed doubt. ”I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

”If a player suffering from side effects is like a piece of bread half-rotted, then Mutants are the entire loaf, moldy and stinking. Their entire bodies are viruses. The difficulty of using them for research is extremely high, and their value is very low, let alone using them to cure diseases or save lives!”

This was quite persuasive. The Stellar Pharmaceuticals escorts also possessed some medical knowledge and agreed more with Dr. Deng’s words.

”No need to say more to him,” the player by the Coffin-like Box said to the tattooed man.

”Although I haven’t studied medicine, don’t you think the limbs of Mutants bear some resemblance to evolution side effects?”

Xu Huo elaborated slowly, ”Game data shows Mutants have very short lifespans because their entire bodies are toxins. But after their mutation, certain genes mutate, and limbs exhibiting animal characteristics become exceptionally robust.”

”Those limbs also aren’t covered in large amounts of muscle.”

He was referring to the type of Mutant encountered during the Preliminary Trial Train, with slender limbs yet possessing no lack of strength or speed.

”Sounds quite reasonable,” Vivi said, resting her chin on her hand. ”But Uncle, Mutants develop those features because they’ve degenerated, and they die soon after. Can they really be used on people?”

”No, no, if your theory were feasible, someone would have done it long ago,” Dr. Deng said, his knowledge framework under attack, waving his hands repeatedly.

Xu Huo then employed the crafty rhetoric of a conspirator, ”If Mutants were completely useless, why would the Game Government allow them to occupy some Game Partitions? For a bit of economic value? Or just to serve as Random Dungeons?”

”Random Dungeons don’t always appear in Mutant worlds either,” Vivi seemed partly convinced.

Xu Huo didn’t care whether they believed him or not; he just wanted to shift the focus onto the Mutants. If he attached the label of ”something Laurence Li meticulously sought,” the truth of his words became less important.

”What you said has even made me curious,” Vivi’s mother said with a smile after a brief silence. ”Since there aren’t many people left on the train anyway, why don’t we all wait and see?”

Everyone tacitly accepted her suggestion and returned to their original positions.

Soon, air current disturbances appeared again, as if a layer of air waves had been pushed out from nowhere.

Within over ten seconds, another horde of Mutants charged towards the train from the distance, the rumbling sound like a stampede of horses!

”Did you really hit the mark?” Dr. Deng pressed against the scroll, trying to see the situation outside clearly. At that moment, Vivi’s mother said, ”My item probably can’t withstand this many Mutants.”

Xu Huo also lacked a defensive item of such large scale, so he said to the tattooed man, ”Can we enter your carriage?”

The tattooed man looked back at the man supporting the Coffin-like Box. After the latter nodded, he allowed Xu Huo and Dr. Deng to enter.