Chapter 189: The Fifteenth Floor Is About to Close
Gu Yu pressed the elevator button again, but the electronic panel still showed no change except for the number "15."
Seeing Xu Huo walk out from the restroom, she instinctively asked, "Did you find any clues?"
"The restroom is still relatively clean," Xu Huo said.
"Heh." Zheng Liang snorted coldly and walked toward the next elevator.
Gu Yu, having some experience dealing with Xu Huo, didn't press further and left with her companions.
Xu Huo, meanwhile, returned to where he had entered the game and examined the bloodstains on the elevator doors and the floor.
These bloodstains overlapped old and new. The handprints on the doors came from both outside slapping and inside prying open the gaps. The floor stains were the same, some pointing toward the elevators and some outward. Compared to this area, the open zone was relatively clean, with only scattered bloodstains on the ground.
Besides that, the wall near the elevator doors had some small abrasion marks, roughly the same thickness as the spikes on the man-eating flowers.
The walls facing the open office area had more marks, while the walls on both sides of the offices and the restroom had fewer, especially the wall near the restroom.
After standing by the wall and observing for a while, he crouched down by the window at the end of the corridor, pushed aside the vines, and carefully checked the edges of the floor. Finding no abrasion marks, he returned to the open area to inspect the edges.
By then, the middle-aged man with the backpack and others had already used tape to reinforce the floor-to-ceiling windows with thick horizontal strips. Seeing him, the man said, "It seems someone has used this method before. There are some leftover tape residues on the walls on both sides."
"Mm." Xu Huo responded, noting that just from the size of this place and the number of floor charging ports, the number of desks and chairs here didn't match up.
The middle-aged man hesitated again before saying, "There's something I'm not sure if I should mention."
"Go ahead."
"I just think the offices and the restroom are too clean," the man said. "From your conversation, I heard there might not only be mutant plants here but also mutant animals. But if someone is attacked, wouldn't they instinctively hide in a sheltered place?"
"That's because the people before didn't stay on the fifteenth floor for long," Xu Huo said, then extended his hand. "Xu Huo."
"Kang Hong." The middle-aged man shook his hand, then asked, "Why do you say that?"
"The restroom is still relatively clean, which means the people who came here before didn't use it frequently. If everyone who entered hadn't been wiped out in a short time, nearly two hundred people couldn't go three or four days without excreting."
Xu Huo looked back at the ground. "This place doesn't look like it's seen a massacre."
Kang Hong suddenly understood. "So that's it."
"But why would they leave the fifteenth floor?" The little girl who had earlier offered to pay Xu Huo had been following him and asked, "Isn't higher supposed to be safer?"
"There's always a reason." Xu Huo glanced at her, pulled a chair over, and sat down to rest.
On the other side, Gu Yu and the flower-selling girl's groups returned empty-handed and gathered in the office area.
Nearly six hours had passed. After the panic, tension, and high alert, everyone had fallen into a state of exhaustion. Moreover, in the past six hours, aside from Tie Ge encountering danger when he went to open the elevator doors, no other incidents had occurred, so people had relaxed a bit.
"Regardless, we need to replenish our energy." Gu Yu took a few bags of snacks and fruit from the trunk of her car. "Luckily, the car came in with us, or we'd all be starving. Everyone, eat sparingly."
"Sister Gu Yu, didn't you used to diet every day? Why do you carry so much food everywhere now?" Xiao Ba pulled at the hem of his skull-print short sleeve to catch a pile of snacks and went off to distribute them.
"At a time like this, who cares about gaining weight?" Gu Yu took two bottles of water, put the rest back in the trunk, and sat on top of it.
This made some people nearby who wanted to ask for food think twice.
Earlier, at Kang Hong's suggestion, they had also consolidated the personal items they had brought in. Most people had been dragged into the game while out buying emergency supplies. Some had dropped their things when the fog hit, and others had brought them in, but vegetables and meat couldn't be eaten directly.
There were some snacks and fruit, but not enough for everyone.
Kang Hong opened his backpack and took out a few packs of compressed biscuits. "Everyone, don't worry. Ninety hours is less than four days. A normal person can survive four days on just water, so with these vegetables, the food is definitely enough."
"No need to fight over it. Let the women eat first. The able-bodied men can wait a bit."
"Why should the women eat first?" A sharp-faced, scrawny man in the crowd objected. "Men and women are equal, right, everyone?"
This wasn't like normal times. People's fear of the unknown intensified their craving for food, and good physical strength was crucial when facing danger, so many were unwilling to give up this opportunity.
"This has nothing to do with equality," Kang Hong said. "It's just the stronger among us helping the weaker."
"Isn't that moral blackmail?" The sharp-faced man stirred up trouble. "Why should we help them? When danger comes, who doesn't want to be in front? Oh, we give them food while we go hungry, and then we're supposed to be the ones left behind?"
Some others shared the same sentiment and voiced their dissatisfaction.
Zheng Liang sneered at this point. "I hope some people don't come begging us for help when danger strikes!"
The crowd fell silent. Compared to the physically weaker women, the men present were the stronger ones, but compared to the players, they were the weaker ones.
"I don't need food." A tall, slender woman stepped forward. "I'm a mountaineer, so I'm in good shape. But this mother next to me is still breastfeeding. Could she get a little extra food?"
Kang Hong tore open a package, took out a biscuit, and handed it to the slightly plump woman.
"Thank you, thank you." The slightly plump woman thanked him repeatedly. Instead of eating it all herself, she broke off half and offered it to the tall woman, who refused, so she passed it to another woman.
The women began to share the food.
At this point, Xu Huo, who had been sitting on a chair in the back, reached up and caught a sports drink that Gu Yu tossed over.
He glanced up—she had already looked away.
Xu Huo placed the drink by his feet, then looked at another, older player wearing glasses, who was sitting in the corner.
The other met his gaze, smiled politely, and nodded at him.
Xu Huo calmly looked away.
"Squeak..." Suddenly, a metallic grinding sound came from the elevators. The next second, all fifteen elevators let out a "ding" simultaneously. As the doors slid open, even the elevator that had nearly cost the stubbled player his life now appeared fully intact before everyone's eyes.
Then, an electronic alarm sounded from within. "The fifteenth floor of Little Flower Red Red Building is about to close. All personnel, please enter the elevators and proceed to the fourteenth floor!"