Chapter 1317: Don't Mess with a Psycho
The effeminate man wiped his boots clean and then paid no further attention to the others, clearly not intending to deal with the player still sitting opposite Xu Huo.
This person had been pulled into a brief illusion by Xu Huo using a prop. Now that he had come to his senses and saw his companion was dead, he was shocked and immediately fled toward the rear carriage door. Unfortunately, before he could step out, he was blocked and pulled back. The short-haired female player tugged at the spider-silk-like threads in the air, dragging the trapped player back, and said to Xu Huo, "Since you don't want to do it, I'll take this one."
Xu Huo made a "please" gesture, and the next moment, the female player flipped her hand, causing the male player to be inverted, head and feet reversed, crashing toward the ground!
But in the next second, the male player broke free from the thread's restraint. He pushed his palm forward through the air, and the short-haired female player was slammed against the window by a powerful force. Then, she broke free from the suppression and engaged in a fierce struggle with the charging male player.
The carriage space was limited, making it impossible to avoid affecting others. The effeminate man's seat was the first to be overturned, and the male player, annoyed that he was blocking the way, shouted at him to get lost... But as soon as the word "get lost" left his mouth, the man's right foot, which was stepping on the table, exploded.
Amidst the screams, the effeminate man kicked him to the ground, pinned his neck with a steel fork prop, and then stomped heavily on his head.
That prop was likely a restrictive one. The male player seemed loosely pinned to the ground, but every attempt to get up failed. He could only cover his head with both hands to block the relentless stomps.
The effeminate man said nothing, but his expression was cold, and his entire body radiated fury. He stomped on the male player's head again and again, breaking his hands, causing the skin and flesh on his hands and face to split open and blood to gush out. He didn't stop, seemingly intent on stomping the player to death right there...
The scene was rather unpleasant.
The short-haired female player had been robbed of her prey and hadn't intervened earlier, but now she seemed inclined to stop him. However, before she could speak, the effeminate man said in a low voice to the male player, who was barely struggling:
"Do you know how many disinfectant wipes it takes to clean a table?"
"I spent five minutes wiping it down when I got on the train. Because of a pest like you, I have to do it all over again. Why are you wasting my time and energy?"
"Can't you see I don't like people touching my things?"
"If you're going to be a player with no sense of awareness, then you deserve to die."
"I don't want to wipe it down over and over either. This is all your fault. Why can't people be considerate of each other?"
"You know people like me already have a hard enough time living. You keep causing me trouble, and now killing you will dirty my hands and my shoes—more mess to deal with... Die! Die! Die!"
It was clear that these words weren't meant for the nearly dead man to understand; the effeminate man was just venting his own frustrations, coming off as somewhat neurotic.
There were plenty of mentally unstable people in the game, but most didn't want to get involved with someone like this—stomping someone to death alive wasn't just a sign of a troubled mind.
Only after the male player died did the effeminate man let out a long sigh, his expression returning to its previous calm. He first used a cleaning agent to wash the bloodstains off his boots, then righted the table, washed it once, and pulled out a pack of disinfectant wipes to scrub it vigorously.
Just watching was exhausting.
The short-haired female player took a light breath and skirted around his table to return to her room.
"Your cleanliness obsession is pretty severe. Have you seen a therapist?" Xu Huo tilted his head to look at the effeminate man. "It's fine normally, but on the train, it's a bit troublesome. If a fight breaks out at night, how many times will you have to wipe that table?"
"Whoever dirties the table, I kill them." The effeminate man smiled faintly, a softness that didn't match his brutal nature. It wasn't that he looked weak, but rather a kind of mildness that seemed to seep from his personality, giving the impression that he was easy to get along with.
Don't mess with a psycho. The few players who had come out to watch the commotion quickly returned to their rooms.
Xu Huo hadn't purchased a room yet. He asked with interest, "What do you do when you stay out?"
"I bring my own room," the effeminate man said. "Places others have stayed are never clean. Who knows what might have been spilled on them."
Xu Huo nodded in agreement, then asked a question that made people uncomfortable, "The air is full of other people's exhaled breath. Don't you feel like those things endlessly cling to your skin, crawl into your ears, your mouth, and squeeze into every pore?"
The other man was silent for a moment before saying, "There's no way around that. I can't exactly scrub my entire body."
"Makes sense." Xu Huo ended the conversation there and leaned back in his seat to rest with his eyes closed.
The effeminate man, after wiping the table clean and sitting down, used a disinfectant wipe on his face before putting on a gas mask.
In the middle of the night, a group of alien species boarded the train, but the players on this train were relatively well-behaved. There were no incidents of lights turning on and self-destructing. Some carriages had commotion, but it didn't spread to others.
As for Xu Huo's carriage, it passed the night peacefully.
The next morning, Xu Huo ordered breakfast. Seeing the effeminate man also looking at the menu, he said, "You can't wipe down utensils that others have used."
The effeminate man paused, then after a moment, pulled a bag of cookies from the luggage compartment to eat. Just as he took a bite, he heard the person next to him say faintly, "Are you sure the packaging is clean? The machine that packed it might have just been touched by a worker who didn't wash their hands after using the bathroom."
The effeminate man couldn't eat anymore. He turned his head and glared at Xu Huo with a sinister look.
Xu Huo, while eating, gave him a smile and said, "Out of sight, out of mind."
In the end, the effeminate man didn't flip out and start a fight. He threw away the cookies and went to the dining car.
The short-haired female player gave Xu Huo a thumbs up.
This was just a minor episode on the train. Soon, Xu Huo arrived at his stop. He got off in another large city in District 001—Dawn City—which was about as far from Fresh Flower City as two Card Cities.
As soon as he got off, he opened his message collection terminal. Yesterday's attack on Fresh Flower City was still a hot topic. Unlike the previous attacks by outer zone players and assassinations by local players, this time it was an internal power struggle within Fresh Flower City. After Xu Huo left, many people died, and a third of the directly administered district was destroyed, including many powerful figures.
But Han Yi wasn't among them.
Although some had captured footage of Han Yi being killed and his body smashed, the Han family had clarified this morning that Han Yi wasn't involved in the conflict at all. Moreover, a living Han Yi had appeared before the public, as part of the victorious faction in this internal struggle, condemning those with ulterior motives and mourning the fallen soldiers.
Judging solely from the holographic material, this Han Yi was indeed different from the previous one—his demeanor and some subtle movements had changed.
But the one Xu Huo had killed, the one who set off the human head fireworks, was definitely dead.