Chapter 1965: Add Fuel to the Fire Before This
At this moment, many people were undergoing surgery, but neither the city government nor the hospital had issued an evacuation order. When Xu Huo burst into one of the floors, the first to greet him were three players!
"Stay twenty meters away from me, thanks!" One of them raised a hand in a stopping gesture. Under his trait, Xu Huo, who had just stepped into the corridor, was immediately sent flying by a strange force. Behind him, capture nets fired by armed robots closed in from all sides, nearly enveloping him completely!
Xu Huo didn't use spatial power. Instead, he used Tangent to shred the nets, simultaneously sweeping through several robots. He then made a "hard-to-refuse" request for a photo to the East District player stationed at the window, and smoothly re-entered the building.
Besides those three players, two more people stood in front of the operating room door. The moment Xu Huo stepped back into the corridor, dense flowers suddenly emerged from the walls and floor of the entire hallway. The naked eye could tell these flowers were formed from peeling wall plaster and floor tiles, but they immediately deconstructed themselves—every petal, every stamen turned into sharp weapons, howling as they charged at the intruder!
The "Inviolable Domain" barrier was tightly blocked from the outside. Although these things couldn't break through the defense, they perfectly obscured Xu Huo's vision. He could sense two players closing in from left and right, followed by a massive box descending over him.
East District players had a habit of capturing Outer Zone players alive. Xu Huo figured that once this box closed, it would trigger mechanisms like the poison-spike bracelet. So he switched his defense item to "Ideal Skin," then opened a hole in the floor and jumped down to the lower level.
But players were waiting for him downstairs too. The moment he landed, a square frame closed in from both sides, trapping him in the middle. The frame item didn't touch him directly, but from a distance, it firmly locked him in place!
Xu Huo used "Harmonious Atmosphere," and in an instant, most of the surrounding items lost their effect. The frame item fell to the ground. Seizing the opportunity, he broke through the encirclement of several players and dove straight into a nearby room—just at that moment, the door of the adjacent doctor's office opened. A long-haired man walked out. As they brushed past each other, he was adjusting his glasses. Their eyes met for a split second before the surging players cut off the connection.
The long-haired man was escorted by six East District players, preparing to leave the hospital. Xu Huo, who had been pretending to break into the operating room from below, immediately stopped. After using "Memory Flashback" on the players surrounding him, he moved through a spatial passage to the outside of the building. But he saw that the man had already calmly boarded an aircraft under the players' protection.
The aircraft blocked all sight. Just as Xu Huo hesitated whether to intercept it, a new wave of combat erupted inside the hospital. It turned out that Qiao Qiao and Old Zhou had followed him. Spotting that his target was the operating room, they immediately stepped in as substitutes. By then, he had drawn most of the players away, so Qiao Qiao and the other easily broke into the operating room.
The person in the operating room was already dead.
"Good intentions, bad outcome." Qiao Qiao came out and apologized to Xu Huo. "You wanted him alive, right?"
Xu Huo frowned slightly. He released his spiritual realm to check the dead psychotherapist inside the operating room, then said to Qiao Qiao and Old Zhou, "Staying entangled any longer will only hurt us. Let's retreat!"
To split the enemy's firepower, the three regrouped briefly before retreating in different directions. After shaking off the pursuit of the East District players, Xu Huo returned to the hospital once more. Because he had used spiritual power earlier, the mutant plants inside the hospital were still growing unchecked. He went straight to the dean's office, intercepted the dean who was trying to destroy data, and not only obtained a list of children who had died under abnormal circumstances at this hospital but also a statistical report on miscarriages among pregnant women.
"The report is quite well done." Xu Huo sneered after reading it, because at the bottom of this statistical data, a clear indicator was marked: from the time a woman of childbearing age had her first child, she could only safely give birth to one child within three years, and only one more in the next three years.
Beyond the high miscarriage rate touted by the East District city government as being caused by environmental issues, the hospital had perfectly filled in the gaps.
Moreover, this data was shared among multiple hospitals. Due to population mobility, many residents couldn't consistently receive treatment at a single hospital. To ensure control over newborns, the hospitals exchanged these records.
Among them was the hospital the middle-aged woman had mentioned.
Xu Huo loaded the dean and five doctors from the list into the "Staff Dormitory" and took them away. He wrote the words "Will Never Fade" on the wall, then quickly changed his appearance and clothing. After distancing himself from the hospital and shaking off nearby aircraft, he met up with Qiao Qiao and Old Zhou at a game hall far from the city center.
The game hall was relatively secluded. The three booked a large suite. Xu Huo first brought out the six people from the hospital. "I've already removed their locators. Now we need to get the truth out of them."
He showed the materials he had taken to Qiao Qiao and the other.
The two hadn't fully recovered from the relentless bombardment following the trench coat man's framing. Seeing the content of the materials, they were both shocked.
"Unless people are too poor to eat, or environmental and genetic factors are limiting, most districts encourage childbirth to ensure a steady stream of players. Why is Jade Spring City doing the opposite?" Old Zhou couldn't understand. His mission involved the Agor Corporation, and although he knew the East District had a high miscarriage rate, he hadn't looked into it deeply.
"No wonder they're recruiting so many psychotherapists. It seems it's not to comfort those who frequently miscarry, but to control them." Qiao Qiao said. "With such strange miscarriages and the hospital's shady dealings, some people must have sensed something was wrong."
People living at the bottom of the game weren't fools. Over time, some would inevitably notice the anomalies—like the middle-aged woman who had lost six children.
"Are you planning to use this to stir up conflict among the East District people?" Old Zhou asked.
"Something like that." Xu Huo said. "There's bound to be a fierce battle between the East District and the Rebel Army. Before that, we can add some fuel to the fire."
Qiao Qiao nodded slightly. "The more chaotic the East District, the better. The more chaos, the easier it is for us to clear the instance."
What they needed to do next was simple: record confession videos of these six people. From injecting the truth serum to the entire interrogation process, everything would be documented. Considering the Agor Corporation's complete control over message collection terminals, the distribution channel was set for virtual reality games.
"The Agor Corporation must be doing this because they don't lack players," Old Zhou added. "I noticed during our earlier fight that the players in Jade Spring City are completely different from those in other districts." (End of chapter)