Chapter 1108: The Incongruities of Xiaohe City
"According to what you're saying, in Xiaohe City, outside players don't actually need to stay for a full fourteen days before they can leave immediately. Would there really be players stupid enough to go over ten days without realizing the time for the high-risk instance has already passed?" "Zheng Da" asked.
"Of course there are smart people too, but not everyone can figure it out. Otherwise, why would Mr. Kang need me..." Jiang Wenzhang had just finished speaking when he suddenly sensed something was wrong. He strained to lift his head and look at the person stepping on him, exclaiming in shock, "You're not Zheng Da!"
"Zheng Da's" appearance hadn't changed, but his expression shifted in an instant. That fake smiling demeanor faded away, replaced by a cold indifference.
Withdrawing the sword pressed against his neck, "Zheng Da" raised a single hand, and their location shifted from the edge of the Great River Woods into a glass prop filled with black rain.
"What..." Jiang Wenzhang, shocked, choked on a couple of mouthfuls of water. He quickly tried to recall his prop, only to find that the "cannot be broken from within" feature simply wouldn't activate. In his panic, he used a water-repelling prop.
Within a thirty-centimeter radius of his body, the water was pushed aside by a layer of air. He immediately walked toward the edge of the glass prop, but unsurprisingly, he touched the glass wall. The realistic sensation made it almost impossible for him to tell whether this was real or an illusion!
"Is your spiritual power really that strong? Strong enough to blur the line between reality and illusion?" He turned back to look at the person standing in the black water. "Did we never actually leave this forest?"
"What do you think?" Xu Huo's voice came through clearly, despite the water separating them.
"This isn't inside my prop!" Jiang Wenzhang felt like he had suddenly found a flaw, and said urgently, "Even if you can interfere with us, there's no way you can enter or exit a prop!"
Xu Huo let out a low laugh. As the sound echoed, the black rain overwhelmed Jiang Wenzhang's prop, drowning him in the water again!
After swallowing two more mouthfuls of water, Jiang Wenzhang learned his lesson and switched to a new protective suit, standing directly in the water. Unfortunately, this didn't last long either. Within just a few seconds, the protective visor automatically cracked, and the murky, clogging black rain mercilessly poured into his mouth and nose...
He changed his protective suit three times and used four props, none of which lasted long. Finally, he went back to using "thirty centimeters away from water" just to barely catch his breath.
Wiping the rain from his face, he couldn't hold back any longer and shouted, "What exactly do you want?!"
Xu Huo's voice surrounded him from all directions, "You understand now, don't you? Whether or not you're trapped in your own prop, I have plenty of ways to kill you. How does it feel to choke on water? If the experience isn't enough, we can do it again."
Jiang Wenzhang gritted his teeth so hard they creaked. "If you're going to kill me, just do it. Give me a clean death!"
The surrounding water suddenly parted on its own, and directly in front of him, Xu Huo, sitting on a chair, finally appeared.
Pointing behind him, Xu Huo said, "Please sit."
Jiang Wenzhang glanced at the rain that seemed merely separated around him, then slowly sat down as instructed. Facing him, he said, "Today is already the third day since your companions entered Xiaohe City. Don't you want to save them?"
"What's the rush?" Xu Huo said calmly. "Isn't there still four days left?"
"The next high-risk teleportation is three months away. You said a player can only stay in Xiaohe City for a little over twenty days at most. So, calculating it out, one month is about seven days. Even if we don't count the two days before entering Xiaohe City, there are still four days to catch the next instance."
He lifted his chin slightly. "Am I right?"
Jiang Wenzhang's face darkened. "Do you think they won't be in danger during those four days?"
"Aside from the cause, everything else about the mysterious disappearances is true."
"Everything?" Xu Huo folded his hands on his knees. "The part about forging the remains of outside-zone players was something I got out of Zheng Da."
"Since the player disappearance incidents are real, and Zheng Da really did follow Mr. Kang's orders to forge traces of outside players..."
"Then that means the spatial chaos doesn't occur that frequently. If any players who stayed behind were randomly taken away, you would need to fake it to make it look like another disappearance incident."
"However, since you know the truth about time in Xiaohe City, yet you were so surprised by what Zheng Da said, that means while new players were disappearing, other players were also vanishing. So you thought it was caused by spatial chaos, which is why you weren't surprised to find player remains in the wild and didn't think twice about it."
"Isn't that the case?" Jiang Wenzhang's mind had been a bit chaotic in the heat of the moment, but now that he thought back, it made sense that Mr. Kang had Zheng Da do this. If most of the disappearance incidents showed no traces of outside players, the players inside Xiaohe City would naturally start to doubt the truth of that explanation.
"Actually, the mysterious disappearances caused by spatial chaos and outside players entering this high-risk instance aren't directly related," Xu Huo picked up his train of thought. "It's just an excuse Mr. Kang and you used to go with the flow and control Xiaohe City. Conveniently, you could also use spatial chaos to cover up the fact that time inside the city doesn't match the outside, forcing more players to stay in Xiaohe City."
"Every time spatial chaos occurs, a few players go missing. So these outside players aren't just your reserve partners; they're also substitutes for you to sacrifice."
"With both a reserve army and a vanguard, it's no wonder you'd be especially 'cherished' toward outside players."
He paused there, leaning slightly forward, looking at Jiang Wenzhang with feigned curiosity. "Is your special trait really that powerful? Can it make players completely forget about time?"
Faced with his blatant doubt, Jiang Wenzhang held his breath and said, "It's not very effective on people with strong spiritual power, of course. But in these past few years, you're the only one I've encountered."
Aside from the rare accidental entries, how strong could players who ended up randomly teleported into a high-risk instance be? Just slightly above average!
"Without you, could Mr. Kang not influence the players entering Xiaohe City?" Xu Huo asked.
Jiang Wenzhang felt like he had been dealt a good hand. "My auxiliary prop is still inside Xiaohe City. Otherwise, how could I have come out?"
"Makes sense." Xu Huo nodded, switching the crossing of his legs, and said, "Since you don't seem keen on talking about yourself, let's talk about Mr. Kang."
Jiang Wenzhang hadn't expected him to deviate from the script and paused for a moment. "Are you really not worried about your companions?"
Xu Huo's expression didn't change. "People who walk the same path aren't necessarily companions."
"What about those two children?" Jiang Wenzhang stared at him intently. "Even if you don't care about the others, you must want to take those two kids away. You might not know this, but children are even more dangerous in Xiaohe City."
A flash of killing intent passed through Xu Huo's eyes as he glanced at him. "You mean Mr. Kang's fondness for children? Don't worry, we'll get to that."
Jiang Wenzhang felt a chill run down his spine from that look. Realizing that he had almost no chance of regaining the upper hand in the negotiation, he had no choice but to say, "Mr. Kang is very mysterious. I don't know much about him."
"He can control Xiaohe City, and it's not just because of his player level. There must be more than one B-level player in the city." Xu Huo said. "For one B-level player to completely dominate everyone else can only mean he's on a completely different level from the other players in Xiaohe City."
"Chaos space seems to only appear in Xiaohe City. When someone goes missing, a normal person's first thought would be to get out of there immediately. It's not like a certain number of players have to disappear for it to stop. And even if that were the case, it doesn't necessarily have to be players..."
"So here's the question: since Xiaohe City isn't a safe enough place, why haven't you relocated?"
(Chapter End)