Chapter 1576: Unless You Can't Help It
Without a doubt, the players who had rushed to the vicinity of the meeting room were also restrained by the Space Blades. Most of them were still standing, but their postures were somewhat strange—some had their heads tilted back, others were in mid-run, and a few were carrying someone on their backs or standing on one leg. Each person seemed stuck in the air, like wax figures whose only movable part was their eyeballs.
The four sides of the meeting room opened onto relatively wide corridors, at least thirty meters across. Beyond the corridors were the training rooms. The deliberate placement of players nearby was likely for safety considerations, but it clearly hadn't been very effective. Instead, it had added several dozen more hostages.
"You're so stupid I don't even want to kill you," Xu Huo said, looking at the person across the table. "If numbers alone could guarantee victory, I wouldn't have come here alone today."
With that, he cleanly granted the other's wish for a heroic death.
Although blood had been spilled, not a single player in the meeting room left Zone 014 to enter the game. Their faces only grew paler, with a trace of barely concealed fear added to the mix—these people didn't even have the courage to enter the game alone.
Every player had a limited number of low-level instances they could enter each year. The people sitting in this meeting room had relied on companions and guides to level up to C-rank or above in an extremely short time, so their own experience was far from sufficient. Moreover, instances only grew harder as ranks increased. After reaching higher ranks, it wasn't guaranteed that every instance would have a guide available. Even if a guide existed, instances weren't static. Sending these people into an instance alone would bring pressure far exceeding what Xu Huo was applying now.
Additionally, these people still held seats at the conference table, which meant they likely weren't spending all their energy studying instances.
There were indeed those who could handle both instances and administrative affairs, but such elites probably wouldn't be sitting at this meeting table today. Even if they were, they would know better than to say certain things out loud.
On either side of the wall, both groups fell silent.
Xu Huo had left the people inside the meeting room room to move, but no one made a move. Some players outside the meeting room had spirit and drive, but they couldn't move even if they wanted to. The instruments or items they carried—designed to counter spiritual and spatial powers—had been cut just moments ago. The intense emotional fluctuations caused by being pinned by Space Ray Blades made them more susceptible to illusion traps. While large doses of Evolution Agents had rapidly boosted their evolution rates, time was limited. Compared to players who had leveled up normally, their evolution rates were generally lower, making them easier to interfere with than expected.
No reinforcements had arrived so far, and Xu Huo had stabilized the situation. Combined with his earlier remarks, it was clear this upheaval had been carefully planned. The elderly man at the head of the table wore a dark expression, his sharp gaze sweeping over the people in the meeting room before settling on the few old-timers. "You're a Super Evolver. The government has never been stingy with White Notes or items. What benefit can you possibly gain from being involved in this? Do you want power? Or some other exchange condition?"
"So you didn't listen to a single word I said," Xu Huo said, pushing his chair forward slightly to make himself more comfortable. "The biggest reason I'm here is because I want to be."
"Hasn't the government trained plenty of high-level players? Don't you understand that a player's personal will can sometimes decide many things?"
The old man, no longer struggling to hold himself up as before, let out a laugh. "I believe you have the ability to control the players you arranged around the meeting room in advance. I also believe you have the ability to kill anyone present. But do you know how many players are in the R1 base?"
"After the meeting started, a security report was sent to the entire base every ten minutes. The last ten minutes have already passed. By now, the whole base knows!"
"Even if you kill all of us, like-minded people will keep coming to fill the gaps..."
The old man's slightly smug words were cut off by the monitoring device Xu Huo pulled out. He watched as Xu Huo lightly tapped the pigeon-egg-sized metal ball. The shell opened, revealing a smaller round core inside. A faint beam of light shot into the air, and six surveillance feeds appeared above the conference table.
The moment the images appeared, everyone in the meeting room was stunned.
"This is the surveillance feed from the base," Xu Huo said.
The old man naturally recognized these as the base's surveillance feeds. The six locations were the main control room, equipment room, training grounds, storage bay, and the two large passages near the meeting room. He had checked these feeds countless times and could identify the positions from the furnishings alone. What shocked him wasn't that the surveillance control had been hijacked, but the sheets of white paper flying everywhere throughout the base!
A4 paper wasn't particularly large or small, but when they flew in front of the cameras, they were especially good at blocking the view. Every so often, they would completely cover the lens, leaving only sound to guess what was happening.
As the old man had said, the entire base indeed knew about the hostage situation in the meeting room—but not because of the missing security report. It was because of what happened right before and after Xu Huo entered.
Nie Xuan had cut off the base's external communication channels and sealed the emergency exits. Control of the base's space had been handed over to the Painting Woman. After several precedents of information being stolen, the government now sometimes cut off the network when handling certain affairs, switching to paper documents that were destroyed after use. So they didn't even need to bring materials with them.
When the papers started flying, the Painting Woman had already used the internal broadcast to warn the people in the base. To make the performance more convincing, she had put on a specially purchased mask—but to avoid leaking more information, Xu Huo had sternly rejected her request to appear in person, allowing her only to use a phone or communicator to broadcast sound.
Though a little disappointed, the Painting Woman was still very excited. She manipulated the white papers to dart around the base. When someone didn't cooperate, she would roll them up and hang them in the air, only letting them down when they were about to suffocate. For uncooperative players, it was even easier—paper could be very sharp. Slitting throats was a bit violent, but cutting hands and feet was no problem. Whether the disobedient person ended up with a scratch or a severed tendon depended on their luck!
To work at the R1 base, people had to pass multiple layers of screening for background and ability. Once inside, whether player or non-player, they had to study player combat cases. The battle over Super Items in Hai City was a mandatory case study. Who wouldn't recognize the papers flying all over the city? That kind of impactful scene was still unmatched by other player battles even now.
More importantly, it was a symbol of Super Items.
The longing and fear of Super Items, the admiration and worship of their holder, combined with the tacit approval and fence-sitting of certain factions, plus a few "small" warnings—the Painting Woman's progress went smoothly. After all, she had stated from the start that she wouldn't kill people easily.
Unless she couldn't help it.
(End of Chapter)