Chapter 205: Creating a Target
That still left five people short.
But no one among the remaining crowd stepped forward voluntarily. Many had seen Brother Tie and his group go up and down the thirteenth floor, and they were now thinking of hiding there instead.
Just then, however, panicked cries suddenly came from the thirteenth floor, followed by violent coughing. A few seconds later, Brother Tie and his men grabbed the ropes and jumped down from upstairs, landing on their knees, tears and snot streaming down their faces, urgently shouting for someone to close the elevator doors.
Gu Yu and the others were startled by their appearance—red, swollen eyes and drool continuously dripping from their mouths—and quickly shut the elevator doors. Jiang Yihua turned back and said, "It looks like some powdery substance floated out from the thirteenth floor."
"Didn't you close the elevator doors on the thirteenth floor?" Zheng Liang came over to lift Brother Tie, but noticed a bit of shiny golden powder on his face. He let go and stepped back, instead looking at the plants they had brought down. "Is it the poisonous powder sprayed by these things?"
"Probably not. They might have triggered a trap on the thirteenth floor," Xu Huo said. Brother Tie and his men were smart enough to only move the flowers he had previously handled.
Gu Yu couldn't stand it anymore and said to them, "Why haven't you used the antidote yet!"
Brother Tie gagged himself, vomiting twice before pouring the antidote into his mouth. Zhang Biao and the other two didn't have antidotes, so Zheng Liang ended up giving them a bottle.
After taking the antidote, their condition improved slightly, but their eyelids were burned, blisters formed at the corners of their mouths, and their tongues seemed swollen. They couldn't speak clearly and were still drooling.
"Mild poisoning, no danger to their lives," Wei Bin said, giving them water to wash their faces. After observing them further, he added, "But if they had stayed a little longer, it would have been hard to say."
Dai Wenqian crouched in front of Zhang Biao and wiped a bit of powder from his face with a handkerchief. "This is pollen."
"But they didn't close the elevator doors on the thirteenth floor," Zheng Liang said grimly. "Even if we don't use this elevator anymore, this poisonous powder could still be carried to other floors."
"A small amount shouldn't be a problem," Dai Wenqian said.
"It looks like the thirteenth floor is off-limits," Gu Yu said disappointedly.
"We still have to proceed with the original plan," Dai Wenqian said, standing up and checking the time. "There are less than three hours left. Since no one is willing to volunteer, we'll draw lots to decide the other five."
At the mention of drawing lots, the surrounding crowd stepped back even further. After what happened on the thirteenth floor, they understood that the only option was to go down floor by floor, but no one wanted to take risks alongside the players.
Zheng Liang sneered, "What's the point of drawing lots? There are always four extra people. Whichever elevator they enter, the people in that elevator will die. If you're unlucky enough to take up an extra elevator, everyone faces the risk of being randomly selected. By the time we reach the eighth floor, there will probably only be about eighty people left."
Xu Huo didn't comment. For now, it seemed the players and non-players were on opposite sides, and the players holding the power of speech was very unfair to the non-players. But in reality, this was actually safer for most people.
If the players didn't intervene, the remaining people would still end up killing each other in a chaotic struggle for the elevators.
"Everyone, think carefully," Kang Hong reminded them at this point. "Cooperating with the players is the only way to benefit. If we find a way to counter the danger this time, the rest of us can survive. But if no one is willing to give in, what do we do with the extra people on this floor?"
"What method are you planning to use to select these four people?"
"In the end, it's still going to be a bloody fight, isn't it?"
After a moment of silence, the wealthy young girl stepped forward. "I... I'll go too..."
If they had to push others to their deaths, women, who are physically weaker than men, would be the first to be abandoned.
A few more people came forward one after another. Besides one frail young man, the other four were all women.
"It's settled," Xu Huo confirmed. "There are still two hours left. Everyone, take a rest."
With that, he sat down on the spot, plugged his earphones into his phone, and listened carefully to the sounds in the video.
This was the second night since entering the instance. From ten o'clock the previous night to four o'clock the next morning, they had been on the thirteenth floor.
At that time, the thirteenth floor had been completely fine.
Including during the day today, when Xu Huo threw the mantis corpse and placed his phone, and when he re-entered the thirteenth floor to place another phone, there had been no problems at all.
He had considered several possibilities regarding the trap mechanism that punished those who violated the instance's warning by staying on the upper floors.
Most of the floors here didn't have surveillance equipment. To determine if someone was lingering, they might use a gravity-sensing device, which was probably installed in the floor. When he cut through the ground during the day, he had discovered a special metal layer in the floorboards.
If this was what they used to detect lingering people, then as long as you didn't step on the floor, you could bypass it.
But this method wasn't foolproof. First, it was impossible to confirm whether other factors were involved, and second, it could only accommodate a few people.
However, the thirteenth floor was different.
He had moved the plants multiple times and entered and exited the thirteenth floor twice without encountering any danger, yet Brother Tie and his men had run into the poisonous pollen.
This didn't seem to have anything to do with the sensing device... But if there was one difference between the thirteenth floor and the others, it was the ventilation system.
The other floors had many windows, but the windows on the thirteenth floor were sealed. The room lacked oxygen, and even with the ventilation system running, it felt suffocating when there were too many people.
Thinking this, he dragged the progress bar on his phone video and listened carefully to the sound of the fans.
He hadn't noticed it yesterday. Logically, with over a dozen ventilation units, it shouldn't have caused a feeling of suffocation. Could the ventilation ducts be blocked?
"Let me see too," Jiang Yihua said, unable to hold back any longer. She knew Xu Huo had placed the phone, but had refrained from mentioning it out of consideration for Dai Wenqian and the others.
Xu Huo took off his earphones and handed them to her, then checked the time before closing his eyes to rest.
Soon it was four o'clock. He, Jiang Yihua, and more than ten others stepped into the elevator. The moment the doors closed, the entire elevator was suddenly yanked upward. As they neared the fifteenth floor, the metal panel above them, along with the light, retracted to both sides, plunging the elevator car into darkness. Then, a rustling sound came from above!
Here it comes!
Xu Huo immediately raised the Ox Shield above his head and lifted his sword with his right hand. But what surged down from above wasn't mutant plants—it was a transparent, slime-like liquid!
A jelly-like substance instantly filled the elevator. The dozen or so people inside, including Xu Huo, were sealed in, and then they were pulled upward one by one!
The moment the slime enveloped him, Xu Huo moved the shield back in front of him, but it didn't create a buffer zone. The slime still surged toward his face. So he put away his sword and shield, placed a fragment of the Headchopper's axe in his mouth, and cupped his hands over his nose and mouth to leave a small gap.
He closed his eyes, feeling himself being dragged into a duct and moving rapidly downward along with it.
Player, please board the train.