Players, Please Board the Train

The people still alive in W18 gave off a terrible impression. They were like a pool of stagnant water, all of them seeming to live in a numb haze, doing little more than not being dead.

“So this is what it looks like when there’s absolutely no hope. That’s bleak,” Shangguan Xi muttered.

His words earned him a rather unfriendly look from the Teenager, who led them there with a stony face. He took them to the seventh floor of the dormitory building and knocked on one of the rooms. “Teacher Ai, I’ve brought two guests back.”

He knocked several times in a row, but no one answered. The Teenager’s expression changed, and he hurriedly moved the potted plant beside the window, reached in to open the window latch, and climbed inside.

A few seconds later, the Teenager opened the door and ran out. “Teacher Ai’s been kidnapped!”

Xu Huo glanced into the room. It looked like an ordinary living space, except that the chair in front of the desk was a little unusual.

“What happened?” Shangguan Xi looked around. “There’s no sign of a struggle.”

The Teenager had no time to say more. He left them with a quick, “Teacher Ai can’t walk properly. He never leaves his wheelchair unless he has to,” then ran downstairs and told the other residents to look for Teacher Ai.

Teacher Ai was an important figure here. All the residents searched the place where they lived, even checking the underground passages, but found no trace of him.

“If players took him, there’s no way you’ll find him no matter how hard you search,” Shangguan Xi said. “Have any strangers come here recently?”

The Teenager had been outside for the past two days, so he hurried to ask the others. In the end, he got a lead from a child of about ten. The previous evening, a player had come by and asked whether anyone from W19 Base was living there. The child had been cautious and hadn’t said anything. Later, the player seemed to chat with him casually, then took pity on him for never having eaten anything good and gave him some food.

A child might listen to the adults and avoid telling outsiders what was inside the protective barrier, but there was no accounting for all the tricks players could use. The child might not even have realized what he’d let slip.

“Teacher Ai is from W19?” Xu Huo asked.

“Teacher Ai escaped from another base city to W19. Then W19 was lost too, so he came to W18.” The Teenager was furious. “Those people must have known he was familiar with the terrain, so they took him to lead them.”

“There’s something I don’t understand,” Shangguan Xi said to Xu Huo. “Can’t they just buy a map? Why do they need someone to guide them?”

That might make sense for ordinary people, but players shouldn’t be in much danger even if the wilderness was a little harsh. They could just follow a map.

“Our main goal is to save time on the journey,” Xu Huo said. “There are only three specimens. Think about how many players there are.”

The wristbands issued to them by the dungeon probably wouldn’t be able to locate the living specimens until they entered W19. Even if they wanted to form a team, they would have to get the specimens first. Otherwise, how would they clear the dungeon?

“Then we’re screwed!” Shangguan Xi slapped his thigh. “What if someone got off the train and went straight to W19 Base? We’d be at a huge disadvantage!”

“Then we take them,” Xu Huo said calmly, then asked the Teenager, “Does Teacher Ai know the underground passage out of the city?”

There were many nests belonging to flying Mutants on the high walls surrounding the secure base. The best way to leave without drawing their attention was to travel aboveground or underground.

The surface was hardly safe either, especially when they had to take someone with impaired mobility along. Under normal circumstances, everyone would prioritize using the existing underground passages.

The Teenager’s expression made it clear that there was indeed a passage out of the city, but he didn’t want to reveal it to outsiders.

“You can guide us there,” Xu Huo said. “The terms we agreed on earlier still stand.”

He said no more, leaving the Teenager a little time to think.

But the Teenager didn’t hesitate for long. “I don’t need the food, but you have to save Teacher Ai!”

“I need him to guide me, so of course I want him alive,” Xu Huo said. “All I can guarantee is that I won’t hurt him.”

That was enough.

The Teenager nodded readily, exchanged a few words with his family, then prepared to lead them to the entrance of the underground passage.

Before leaving, Xu Huo gave the Teenager’s mother a bag of rice and a bag of frozen vegetables, real rice and vegetables.

“Why are you carrying this stuff?” Shangguan Xi looked as if he’d been struck by the sight. “You’d be better off bringing some energy bars.”

“Energy bars aren’t nutritious,” Xu Huo explained seriously, though it sounded a little like a joke.

Shangguan Xi stared at him for a while before finally managing to say, “Do players have to worry about nutrition too?”

Their eyes met, and both decided there was no need to discuss it any further.

A few minutes later, the three of them entered the underground passage through a wastewater inlet two hundred meters from the protective barrier.

W18’s underground passages had been specially modified. They looked more like a maze, with one fork potentially connecting to more than four others. The passages didn’t just run forward, backward, left, and right; some also led underground.

“This is ridiculous. The passage out can lead even farther underground...” Shangguan Xi hadn’t finished speaking when the Teenager nimbly jumped down. After landing below, he turned back to explain, “The horizontal passages don’t necessarily lead out. You could reach the end and find yourself at a dead end.”

Xu Huo gestured for him to be quiet and follow.

The two of them followed the Teenager through a series of twists and turns. Then he suddenly stopped, lowering his voice excitedly. “Teacher Ai took this route too, just like I thought!”

Someone had passed through the fork ahead. There were traces on the other routes as well, but the Teenager seemed able to recognize the marks Teacher Ai had left.

Eager to find Teacher Ai, the Teenager picked up the pace. But after they had gone a little farther, a trap suddenly appeared in the passage: some concealed projectiles attached to the walls. Shangguan Xi reacted quickly and blocked them, but they triggered toxic gas farther ahead!

“Those people have no conscience!” Shangguan Xi said. “The underground passages are connected in every direction, so the toxic gas is bound to spread everywhere. A dose like this won’t even kill players, and they’re still leaving the residents no way to survive!”

The Teenager pressed the gas mask Xu Huo had given him over his face and plunged into the cloud of poison.

The traps left by the people ahead were child’s play, but they would have been more than enough to deal with an ordinary person or two. In the end, Shangguan Xi stopped the Teenager and went ahead himself, telling him to simply give directions.

“Kid, as someone who’s been around, let me give you some advice. As long as the green hills remain, there’ll be no shortage of firewood. I know you’re desperate to save someone, but a rush of hot-blooded courage won’t make a golden aura appear around you. If you charge in and get killed, you won’t save anyone, and there won’t even be anyone to collect your corpse. What’s the point?”

“Besides, your Teacher Ai wouldn’t have left those marks so you could go save him. You’re no match for players with that little body of yours. He was just trying to tell you where he was going. Going up there would just make you a sitting duck. You’re better off guiding us properly.”

The Teenager looked at him with dead-fish eyes. “You’re a player too. Why do you talk so much?”