# Chapter 160: The Old Man Who Tells Stories
"Do we need to meet up with the other players?" Tao Chengxin asked as she followed the white-dressed girl.
Besides them and the deceased Shen Tai, there were also Wang Qiao, Gao Baimei, and Tang Yuan.
"Of course not," Sun Jirou said. "Those three aren't trustworthy, especially that Tang Yuan."
"The two players who kidnapped him the day before yesterday were most likely killed by him."
Tao Chengxin wasn't really that kind-hearted about bringing others along; what she worried about was: "The third task of the instance is to find something. The three of us are a bit short-handed."
"Yesterday, there were other players who hadn't shown themselves following us." She looked at Xu Huo. "Is that player with Tang Yuan?"
"Do you want to know?" Xu Huo asked ambiguously.
Tao Chengxin couldn't figure out what he meant and hesitated before saying, "Actually, I don't really want to know that badly."
The white-dressed girl walking ahead laughed. "If you want to know, it's simple. Three groups of people came to find me yesterday. The first was a man and a woman, the second was a ruthless man, and the third was polite and gave me money."
"Mr. Xu must know these three groups, right? You installed a monitor on the umbrella you gave me, so you must have heard our conversation."
Tao Chengxin and Sun Jirou both looked at Xu Huo. His expression now was completely different from yesterday. The two had felt something was off but, due to their tense nerves, hadn't reacted in time. Now that the white-dressed girl reminded them, they realized this guy was playing the fool to catch the wise!
Xu Huo didn't deny it either. His goal had already been achieved.
"If Wang Qiao and Gao Baimei didn't go to the Blocky Bread Shop, they must have gone to the Fresh Sausage Shop. As for the person following me, if he was alone, there would be no need for him to press me about my conversation with the guide."
He looked at the white-dressed girl. "You told him about the Bear Claw Restaurant and the Fresh Sausage Shop. If Tang Yuan went there, the two of them are most likely working together."
"You deliberately tricked us yesterday, making us go verify the authenticity of those places!" Sun Jirou immediately connected it to his performance the day before. He had intentionally acted confident in front of the other players, claiming he had clues, while half-revealing and half-concealing to spark their imagination, making the other players develop the idea of following him!
Tao Chengxin stared wide-eyed at Xu Huo. "We all fell for it!"
"I didn't expect anyone to cooperate so well beforehand," Xu Huo said, glancing meaningfully at the white-dressed girl. At most, he had wanted to get some information from the locals, but he had set the age range at thirty-five and above. Even if most of the elderly in Block Fairy Tale City were dead, he couldn't verify it alone.
Having the other players voluntarily go find people was more convenient than him trying to persuade them with words.
Whether or not anyone found clues, it was progress.
He just hadn't expected the white-dressed girl to show up voluntarily.
The white-dressed girl smiled but said nothing.
The group walked in silence and soon reached their destination.
It was a small courtyard on the edge of Fairy Tale City. The white-dressed girl pushed open the door and invited them in.
The yard was full of sunflowers. As soon as the four stepped inside, the two rows of sunflowers facing the door suddenly turned their backs in unison.
Xu Huo and Sun Jirou didn't think much of it, but Tao Chengxin was startled. "Is this some kind of item?"
The white-dressed girl turned back and said, "I heard this is a specialty from the E19 wormhole point, called 'Not-So-Bright Sunflowers.' They like to turn their backs on people."
Tao Chengxin was half-convinced. "Did the sunflowers become spirits?"
The white-dressed girl laughed. "Humans evolve, and plants evolve too. This type of sunflower developed a special pollen projection range in a specific environment. Its pollen forms a complete cycle around the sunflower. Once someone breaks that cycle, the sunflower changes direction to re-project its pollen."
"I see," Tao Chengxin said. "I've only seen evolved animals before. This is my first time seeing an evolved plant."
"Plants aren't like animals; their changes aren't obvious."
The white-dressed girl invited them into the house and greeted the old man sitting in a rocking chair by the window. "Grandpa Bai, I'm back, and I brought some friends."
The old man in the rocking chair seemed slow to react. It took several seconds before he turned his head and said slowly, "Tea."
The white-dressed girl brewed tea, pushed the rocking chair over to the sofa, poured a cup for each person, then picked up a cup to feed the old man.
The old man's hands trembled violently; he couldn't hold the cup at all. He leaned on the white-dressed girl's hand, took two sips of tea, then smiled at her. "You drink."
The white-dressed girl wiped the corner of his mouth with a handkerchief.
Xu Huo and the other two didn't touch their teacups. The white-dressed girl didn't mind and held her own cup as she said to the old man, "Grandpa Bai, they want to know about what happened twenty years ago."
The old man's expression immediately changed, and he quickly asked, "Are they players?"
After the white-dressed girl nodded, he became somewhat agitated, trying to sit up from the rocking chair, but before his back could straighten, he fell back again. Finally, he could only grip the armrest and gasp for breath. "Good, good, it's good that you're players. You must spread the truth about Fairy Tale City."
Sun Jirou exchanged a glance with Tao Chengxin. "Elder, please tell us about what happened twenty years ago."
The old man's cloudy eyes sparkled with light. He said, "There used to be players in Fairy Tale City too, but unfortunately, they were all killed by the people from Government Hall."
"Twenty years ago, not long after Fairy Tale City entered the game, Government Hall used the lie of training players to trick many of them into going to LT Biopharmaceutical Company. They used players for experiments. In less than two years, they developed a potion that could make ordinary people evolve quickly."
"When evolvers first used this potion, their physical abilities and intelligence grew rapidly. But over time, they would develop xenomorph symptoms."
"However, LT only told the players that this was a side effect of the potion and that taking their specially developed antidote could alleviate the symptoms."
"Not all players were fools. After entering the instance, some discovered the truth and united with other players to resist LT. But instead, LT framed them as cannibal players and injected them with large amounts of evolution potion, turning them into something neither human nor ghost in a short time."
"Some players were deceived and helped LT hunt down the xenomorph players. In this way, those who knew the truth either died or were captured. Those blinded by greed, wanting more players to obtain useful items and weapons from the instances, actually dumped the potion into Fairy Tale City's drinking water system."
"In just three short months, half of the tens of millions of people slowly turned into xenomorphs," tears flowed from the old man's eyes. "In that one month, Fairy Tale City became almost a dead city. Apart from xenomorphs, you couldn't see a single living person outside. Everywhere was the stench of rotting corpses and blood. Those who were once compatriots roamed the streets in groups, eating the remaining corpses when they were hungry..."