Chapter 1602: Let Me Ask You Something
Judging by the current situation, whether ticket players or non-ticket players, everyone faces the same dangers upon entering.
Unconscious drowsiness and fungal poisoning might not be fatal, but other rules hidden within the instance aren't necessarily so easy to avoid.
For the vast majority of players, space is a blind spot. Even if they carry temporal-spatial items, they are still completely clueless when it comes to aspects of the game that might involve theories or rules of time and space.
Young Master Mo and Scarface Glasses both knew this wasn't simply a matter of forcing themselves to stay awake for ten days. Even if they truly didn't sleep for ten days, they couldn't guarantee that only those who fell into deep sleep would disappear.
The issue now wasn't about finding the "Midsummer Night Star River" or not; it was about finding a way to survive until the instance time ended.
Things had been a bit unpleasant earlier, but Young Master Mo could bend when necessary. He directly said to Xu Huo, "Even if you discover someone has disappeared, you might not be able to stop it."
Hearing this, Xu Huo had to give him a second look.
Realizing that it was his interruption that had caused Xu Huo to miss the moment a player vanished, Young Master Mo felt no regret. Instead, he said, "Aren't there still so many people? Just wait a bit longer, right?"
Xu Huo said nothing.
With the rules of disappearance completely unknown, there were many possibilities. If the disappearances weren't random, then encountering another one might take who knows how long.
Of course, if "being watched" or "someone being awake" were excluded factors, then it was perfectly normal for Xu Huo to not personally witness a player's disappearance.
After confirming that Young Master Mo and the other man weren't responsible, Xu Huo turned back to the previous location. However, as he drew closer, he frowned deeply:
Everyone had been killed.
Except for the person who had vanished from the room, the others remained in their sleeping postures, their throats slit. They had been dead for a while now, their protective suits filled with blood both inside and out.
Young Master Mo and Scarface Glasses followed. Seeing the scene, the former remarked, "Could someone have been hiding nearby just now?"
"No," Scarface Glasses said definitively. "At least when the three of us were together, there were no active players within a two-kilometer radius."
He crouched down to examine the wounds on the bodies. "These people all died at the same time. The killer was very efficient. But not all of their items were taken; it seems they only picked up what was useful."
The surveillance devices in the room—whether placed by Xu Huo or the sleeping players—were all gone.
"Obviously, someone already knows the rules of this instance and is taking advantage of players sleeping to come out and kill," Young Master Mo said, his tone unchanged but his expression growing somewhat grave. "Could it be that once you fall asleep, you truly can't wake up?"
Who would believe that a group of advanced players could die so inexplicably?
"It might be a player who already knew the situation in this instance," Xu Huo said after checking inside and outside the room. "As long as they wear the right protective suit, they can avoid the drowsiness."
Although they were now wearing protective suits that could supply breathing, they had already been affected upon entry. Even if they needed to inject antidotes or eat, drink, or relieve themselves, they would inevitably come into contact with the air. It was impossible to be completely immune.
Ten days was too long.
"With enough antidote, it should be fine." Young Master Mo didn't dare to be too confident and immediately searched the Under Dimension for information on fungi that could induce drowsiness, hoping to find a suitable antidote.
The night was only half over. The icons on Xu Huo's map had long stopped increasing. Glancing at the location of the last icon, he turned to the other two and said, "Players from outer zones probably don't know much about this instance. The one who acted might be a player from Zone 013. Gentlemen, good luck to you."
With that, he went straight to find Chi Xian.
After sprinting through the thick fog for a while, he arrived at a school.
This was where Chi Xian's marker was located.
Stepping onto the school playground, he released his Spiritual Realm and quickly scanned all the buildings. He then detected traces of items in the restrooms on the first floor and the top floor.
His vertical pupils opened simultaneously in both locations. Both were players, but neither was Chi Xian.
That was to be expected, though. If he really wanted to find a place to sleep, he wouldn't easily reveal his location to a stranger.
After searching nearby and still not finding him, Xu Huo gave up. He found a room in a residential building near the school and tried to fall asleep.
So far, he could confirm that he had been poisoned. The King Fungus had been continuously detoxifying him, but he wasn't sure if it could completely counteract the drowsiness-inducing fungus—if that was indeed what it was.
Sitting down by the bed, he released his Spiritual Realm. The empty room was immediately filled with the Library Tower and the spiral staircase. White flowing water moved and coalesced before him, gradually forming the shape of a table.
He tapped on the tabletop, and the white table disintegrated. From somewhere on one of the Library Tower's floors, the same tapping sound echoed back.
Closing the Library Tower, Xu Huo lay down fully clothed. Although he hadn't felt sleepy before, once he actually lay down, a wave of drowsiness washed over him. Before long, his consciousness began to blur. Just as he felt himself about to fall asleep, someone gently patted him on the shoulder.
Opening his eyes, he checked the time and found that less than ten minutes had passed.
"This method won't work anymore." Xu Huo rubbed his brow. Entering a state of sleep when his own safety wasn't guaranteed was never a wise move, especially since he wasn't sure if he had to be in a deep sleep to enter an even more dangerous environment.
The world outside the window remained deathly still. After a two-second pause, he left the room and moved all the sleeping people hiding nearby into the school. At the same time, he placed surveillance devices inside and outside the classrooms, on the school gate, and on the fences.
Returning to the classroom, he sat on the podium, spinning the Puzzle Ball while keeping an eye on the sleeping people below.
Unfortunately, even after he solved the second layer of the Puzzle Ball and waited until dawn, no one disappeared—until someone finally woke up.
The first to wake was the male player who had been hiding in the women's restroom on the first floor. Realizing he was lying on a desk, he immediately distanced himself from the nearby people and rushed all the way to the playground—a distance of two hundred meters could evade many items.
Then two more woke up. Seeing Xu Huo sitting calmly on the podium, they couldn't help but ask, "Why did you move us here?"
The two weren't stupid. Aside from Xu Huo, everyone else, awake or not, was on the desks. And he didn't look like he had just woken up, so it could only be that they had been moved.
Since he hadn't acted while they were asleep, it meant his goal wasn't to kill and rob. That meant there was room for negotiation.
"Why are you running so far?" Xu Huo turned to the person on the playground. "If I wanted to kill you, I would have done it already. Come here, I want to ask you something."
This was a notification, not a negotiation. So the next second after he finished speaking, the person vanished from the playground and flashed back into the classroom.
(End of Chapter)