Chapter 159: Assassin Player
Tao Chengxin, who had been keeping watch outside, relaxed when she saw them come out and gestured to go out from another direction. In the short time just now, the puppet master and the owner of this shop had already changed direction.
The three of them left the Blocky Bread Shop and found a nearby shaded corner to rest. Tao Chengxin used a frog to chase away the prowling wild cats and immediately asked Sun Jirou, "Didn't you say you had a lead? What lead?"
Sun Jirou wiped her face and drank two bottles of self-healing agent before speaking. "I found a list inside."
"The owner of the Blocky Bread Shop is an outer-zone cannibal player. He seems to be assassinating the old-timers in Block Fairy Tale City Station."
"Of the twenty people on the list, only three are left. One of them is a woman. She should be the storytelling woman we're looking for."
"Where is she?" Tao Chengxin quickly asked.
Sun Jirou glanced at Xu Huo. "I don't know. The shop owner is looking for her too."
She paused, then asked Xu Huo and the others, "Why did you suddenly come here?"
"Don't even mention it," Tao Chengxin said. "We almost lost our lives at the Bear Claw Restaurant. Luckily, Brother Xu killed the restaurant owner in the end."
"You killed the restaurant owner?" Sun Jirou found it hard to believe. "Wasn't the owner of the Bear Claw Restaurant an outsider player?"
"Why would you think that?" Xu Huo immediately asked.
"The Blocky Bread Shop has contact information for the Bear Claw Restaurant, along with the Fresh Meat Sausage Shop," Sun Jirou explained. "When Shen Tai and I saw it, we concluded they must be in cahoots, with that female tour guide luring players over to be killed."
Xu Huo shook his head slightly. "That's not necessarily true. It's more likely a case of using a borrowed knife to kill."
"The list you found should be a list of surviving players from the original Block Fairy Tale City. If the owners of these shops are targeting the people on that list, then the low-level players coming here aren't that important."
He glanced at Tao Chengxin as he spoke. "The player we killed at the Bear Claw Restaurant wasn't the owner. He followed me there just like you did. He was an E-level cannibal player."
At the mention of following, Tao Chengxin and Sun Jirou's expressions flickered with momentary awkwardness, but the latter quickly said, "You mean that female tour guide's target was us?"
"Could she be the instance boss?" Tao Chengxin asked in confusion.
Xu Huo thought for a moment. "It's also possible that she is our mission target."
"Didn't you say the storytelling woman is at least thirty-five?" Tao Chengxin's voice rose slightly. "That woman is at most in her early twenties!"
"That's not necessarily true. Maybe they're connected," Sun Jirou said. "Don't you two find it strange? Block Fairy Tale City and the Government Hall are completely separate. They basically don't interact. Everyone says the Government Hall is experimenting with anti-contamination agents, but the places we've passed through haven't been contaminated at all. What are they researching?"
"And there are outer-zone players assassinating the original Block Fairy Tale City players. There are no children here, and no babies are being born. Is the Government Hall behind this?"
Tao Chengxin was a bit confused. She interrupted, "What's the purpose of this? To make Block Fairy Tale City go extinct? This place is so prosperous. I heard someone say that the tax revenue from Fairy Tale City accounts for more than half of the Government Hall's income, far exceeding the commercial output of the contaminated areas. What benefit is there in destroying this city?"
Their conversation gave Xu Huo a clue. He suddenly realized that the Government Hall had built its buildings in the contaminated area not for secret research, nor to isolate Fairy Tale City, but possibly because they couldn't enter here.
The major contamination event twenty years ago was fake. Where did all those xenomorphs come from? Considering that Block Fairy Tale City's area had shrunk to one-twentieth of its original size and that outer-zone forces had taken over most of the original Fairy Tale City's territory, it was highly likely that outer-zone forces were behind this.
Block Fairy Tale City wasn't without players, but most of its players had probably died at the very beginning of the world's gamification. To this day, outer-zone players were still killing people according to a list, and they were all killing elderly people. The other side wasn't trying to exterminate Fairy Tale City—they were trying to exterminate Fairy Tale City's players!
The locals mostly believed that the contamination event had caused Fairy Tale City's disaster, but from a player's perspective, it was clear that the appearance of xenomorphs wasn't contamination at all, but poison and evolution. If Fairy Tale City was now controlled by its original players and cut off from the Government Hall, whether out of stance or interest, someone would want to make the players here disappear completely!
The farming area... Xu Huo thought of the skinner who supplied materials to the cannibal restaurants. Different wormhole points, different districts, all had cannibal players. With demand came fresh meat factories and farming areas.
"Are you... okay?" Tao Chengxin asked instinctively when she saw his expression suddenly turn grim.
Xu Huo pulled himself together. "It's almost dawn. Let's go to True Love Square."
"You still want to find that tour guide?" Sun Jirou said. "She set us up. She might not show up again."
Without seeing the person, Xu Huo didn't say much. He ignored the two and headed straight for True Love Square, leaving Sun and Tao with no choice but to follow.
For now, besides the female tour guide, they had no other leads.
After waiting at True Love Square until dawn, when tourists gradually began to appear in the square, the girl in the white dress soon showed up.
Today she was wearing a white top and pants. She looked slightly surprised to see Xu Huo.
"Thanks to you, I had a very eventful night," Xu Huo said, taking a drag of his cigarette.
The girl in the white dress pursed her lips in a smile. Taking advantage of the sparse crowd nearby, she said softly, "You guys are really something. No player has ever come out of those places alive before."
"So you were indeed leading us to our deaths!" Sun Jirou's eyes were filled with hatred. "What exactly are you trying to do? Are you in cahoots with those cannibal players?"
The girl in the white dress shook her head. "Actually, I led you there because I wanted you to kill those cannibal players."
Xu Huo raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "You know our instance mission. Leading low-level players to kill them isn't very reliable, is it?"
The girl in the white dress smiled gently. There was no trace of guilt or unease in her expression, only a tender meaning. "For the sake of Fairy Tale City, you have to try every method."
"Stop with the nonsense. You must know the old players from the original Block Fairy Tale City. Take us to them." Tao Chengxin moved closer, pointing her frog at the girl's lower back as a threat. "If you don't cooperate, it can rip your intestines out in one bite!"
"I wasn't planning on running away," the girl in the white dress said. "Don't be so tense. I don't mean you any harm."
"You've got some nerve saying that!" Sun Jirou said angrily. "My friend died saving me!"
The girl in the white dress looked at her. "Then you made a really good friend."
Sun Jirou clenched her fists. Xu Huo interrupted them. "Don't waste time. We still have to find something after hearing the story."