Chapter 218: Kill to Survive (Bonus for Tips)
Zheng Liang immediately did as he was told, but at that moment, shouts came from downstairs. He rushed over to look and saw that the elevator door on the thirteenth floor had sprayed out a cloud of golden powder—the toxic powder from the man-eating flower’s roots!
By then, Dai Wenqian and the others had already come up, with some non-players lagging behind. These people frantically climbed the flower vines, but the vines had limited load capacity. Suddenly, they snapped in the middle, and the five or six people hanging below all fell onto the elevator car, only to be engulfed by the surging toxic powder. The combined weight of their bodies and their struggling movements caused the elevator car to shake and begin sinking!
“Hurry up!” Dazhi turned back and grabbed the flower vine, but the two people below reached out and seized his arm, dragging him into the elevator shaft!
“Dazhi!” Jiang Yihua grabbed his hand, her body wedged against the floor.
The nearby Xiao Ba and several others quickly rushed to help, but at that moment, the flower vine broke from above. The weight of the people below all pressed down on Dazhi, and behind them, three non-players who had jumped out from the thirteenth floor and grabbed the legs of those below formed a chain of nearly ten people!
With one hand gripping the end of the flower vine and the other holding Jiang Yihua’s hand, Dazhi looked up as he saw more and more toxic powder surging from the thirteenth floor.
“Don’t you dare!” Jiang Yihua’s face changed drastically, and she immediately shouted, “Let them go! I’ll pull you up!”
But the three people below had their arms tightly clamped around his, their nails digging into his flesh. In life-or-death moments, the survival instinct unleashes strength beyond imagination—one person even bit down hard on his finger!
“Don’t think you can shake us off! If we die, we all die together!” the people below screamed frantically.
“Kill to survive!” Dai Wenqian said coldly.
Dazhi hesitated, but Jiang Yihua spoke to the people below: “Sir, would you like to buy a flower?”
The expressions of the frenzied few stiffened for an instant. Once Dazhi’s hand was free, he quickly pulled out a card and released it downward. A tiger that had grown large knocked away everyone clinging to him, and the flower vine fell along with them.
Heavy objects thudded against the elevator car, accompanied by screams and curses. The elevator, stuck between floors, began to plummet rapidly.
Dazhi was pulled up, and the elevator door immediately closed.
“Don’t just stand there! Help!” Gu Yu said. “Close all the elevator doors!”
Everyone immediately split up to act.
Since most of the elevator doors on the thirteenth floor were already closed, the mutant creatures’ jumping ability wasn’t enough to cross three floors continuously, so closing the doors went smoothly. The real problem was the mutant creatures outside.
Now, with the fifteenth floor wide open, the windows in front and on the sides had no barriers at all. Even after clearing the flower vines inside, it still wasn’t safe, because the vines on the lower floors were tangled and overlapping. As long as some of them clung to the fourteenth floor, they could create an opportunity for the mutant creatures.
After killing two more mutant creatures that tried to jump up, Xu Huo turned back and said, “Scatter and hide in a few offices.”
“Better to all hide in the break room together,” Dai Wenqian said. “The break room has only one front door and one window. Whether it’s mutant creatures or man-eating flowers, there are only two ways in. It’ll be easier to deal with them.”
Xu Huo raised his hand and slashed at the wall of the break room. The wall wasn’t made of metal, just ordinary building materials, so it was easy to break.
“The middle office is relatively safe, but that’s mainly for guarding against the man-eating flowers. Without the vines, the mutant animals won’t find it easy to come up.”
“Then let’s go to the office,” Chen Shu said. “I think Kang Hong’s condition isn’t right.”
Gu Yu pulled aside the clothes wrapped around him and saw his knee and half his thigh had turned dark blue-black. Frowning, she said, “Has he used an antidote?”
“We’ve already given it to him,” Jiang Yihua said. She had given him all the antidote she got from the flower room’s wooden hut.
“Do we need more antidote?” Zheng Liang asked. “I still have some here.”
“It’s useless,” Dai Wenqian said. “If the antidote worked, one dose would have shown effect. This means the medicine doesn’t match the poison. Drinking more won’t help, so don’t waste another dose.”
Zheng Liang wanted to try anyway, but Zhang Biao spoke up: “Give it to me! I was bitten by a mutant creature too!”
Gu Yu went over to check his wound. “You’re not poisoned at all! Why would you use an antidote?”
“Who knows if there’s poison? Just because it hasn’t flared up now doesn’t mean it won’t later!” Zhang Biao argued confidently.
Zheng Liang couldn’t be bothered to look at him and directly fed the antidote to Kang Hong.
But as Dai Wenqian had said, drinking it was useless. Kang Hong’s bodily functions were gradually weakening, and he had already fallen unconscious.
Chen Shu laid him down on the floor, red-eyed, and said, “He was a good person.”
Gu Yu and the others were silent. They still had to guard against the possible return of the man-eating flowers and had no spare energy to dwell on it.
The group moved to the middle office. Xu Huo, Jiang Yihua, and a few others took one room, while Dai Wenqian and Gu Yu’s group took another. Most of the remaining non-players chose Xu Huo’s room.
Below, the roars of mutant creatures could still be heard, but as long as they didn’t come up to the fifteenth floor, they weren’t a threat.
As the sky darkened, the sounds outside gradually diminished.
“Kang Hong is dead,” Chen Shu, who had been keeping vigil beside him, suddenly said late at night.
Jiang Yihua and Dazhi looked sad. From the escape on the thirteenth floor, only a little over twenty people remained, including players. Now there was one less.
“Nearly two hundred people, and in just two or three days, only a tenth are left,” Chen Shu said mournfully. “If I’d known it would come to this, why bother struggling until now? We might as well have followed the elevator rules and reduced the numbers.”
“Getting to the first floor doesn’t mean absolute safety,” Xu Huo said. “The entire building has the most bloody handprints on the fifteenth-floor elevator door. This likely means that no matter how many people reach the first floor, they’ll eventually have to face the mutant creatures. And even if they make it to the fifteenth floor, whether they survive is another matter.”
“And those who fell,” the wealthy little girl said softly. “If we had gotten to the fifteenth floor earlier, maybe they wouldn’t have died.”
Jiang Yihua had been looking after her, so she brought her along when leaving the thirteenth floor, but the injured woman was left behind forever on the thirteenth floor.
“Who could know what traps are in an instance?” Jiang Yihua said, hugging her arms. “The thought of having to cycle through days like this forever makes me feel it’s better to be dead than alive.”
“I want to become a player,” the little girl said, her attitude completely opposite. “Even if I have to keep playing games, it’s better than being randomly dragged into an instance and killed for no reason.”
Jiang Yihua paused. “After we get out, you can apply to become a player.”
Some people harbor beautiful hopes but are crushed by reality, some suffer blows and never recover, while others, after facing life and death, become resolute. The game is like a long-distance elimination race—some leave, some enter.
Xu Huo glanced at the few people with their varied expressions and refocused his attention on the window outside.