Chapter 2220: Killing Players
By this time, Yellow Hair could no longer open his personal panel. It wasn't that he had lost connection with the game, but that he was trapped in an illusion, having lost all accuracy in his actions and judgments. The prop he thought he was holding might not be a prop, the enemy he saw might not be an enemy, and in severe cases, even anything he touched might not be real.
Footsteps approached from behind. Yellow Hair wiped his tears and turned around but saw no one. Just as he thought he was having auditory hallucinations, the footsteps grew louder. He quickly stood up, put distance between himself and the source, and stared at the direction of the sound, shouting, "Come out!"
Realizing that Yellow Hair couldn't see him, Xu Huo stopped. He gathered a bit of materialized object at his fingertip, cut open the spiritual world in front of him, stepped out through the crack, and said, "Why are you alone?"
Yellow Hair still didn't dare to relax. He quickly asked, "Are you a Mental Evolver?"
Xu Huo nodded. He released his own spiritual world to push back the spiritual power inside the temple, forcibly creating a less oppressive environment. His mental interference hadn't yet reached the level where he could blur a player's perception of reality in an extremely short time. But within his spiritual world, Yellow Hair suddenly regained his vitality—he opened his personal panel!
"It's open! It's really open!" Yellow Hair hurriedly started pulling out his props, saying as he did, "I'll take them all out now, so I don't lose access to my personal panel again later!"
Xu Huo walked over. "What about the other players? There are far fewer people."
"Dead." Yellow Hair instinctively touched the eye on his arm. "See this? I don't know who discovered it, but this eye, which represents the depth of mental influence, can be transferred to others. The fewer eyes you have, the less mental interference you suffer. To get rid of the eyes on their bodies, those people turned on each other. There were quite a few casualties."
"Besides that, others died in this instance dungeon. Every player's experience is different. Sometimes someone would be fine, then suddenly and inexplicably walk into a wall, or go mad and attack wildly. The end result is always death."
He sized up Xu Huo and noticed that there wasn't a single eye on his arm. His eyes lit up. "Friend, how about we travel together?"
"I'm afraid you'll interfere with me." Xu Huo gestured with his chin toward the eyeballs rolling around on Yellow Hair's arm. He was about to head out of the temple when, out of nowhere, someone ambushed him from behind—a high-evolution-rate player threw a full-force punch at his back!
Instead of using a prop to block, Xu Huo clenched his fist, turned around, and took the punch head-on!
Their fists collided, and both were pushed back by the force, each retreating several steps to regain their distance.
After steadying himself, Xu Huo was somewhat surprised. He had only intended to test the changes in his physical strength after evolution, but just like his leap in self-healing ability, his power had also skyrocketed. The A-rank player who attacked him had an evolution rate close to 90%, yet after exchanging blows, Xu Huo didn't feel strained.
In contrast to his ease, the A-rank player's face was grim. His right hand twitched involuntarily a few times. After a moment, he said, "It's you, isn't it? You're that Xu guy."
"The moment you released your spiritual power, I sensed it. He screwed you over so badly, and you're still traveling with him? Aren't you afraid of losing your life?"
The last sentence was directed at Yellow Hair. Although Yellow Hair also suspected Xu Huo's identity, there were many Mental Evolvers. Making accusations based on mere guesses would only offend people. Now that the A-rank player had exposed it, he had to take a stance. "Let bygones be bygones."
The A-rank player choked. "You can actually say that?"
"Why can't I?" Yellow Hair said helplessly. "You don't even know Brother Xu. You only came to the temple earlier to pick up scraps. To be blunt, you walked right into it yourself. No one invited you. It's not worth fighting to the death over this."
Besides, this was a mental-type instance dungeon venue. No matter what, the other person was stronger than you.
"Anyway, we're all trapped in this instance dungeon for a week. Why not just bury the hatchet?" He played the peacemaker, saying to Xu Huo, "We all want to clear the instance dungeon. Don't bother with him."
Then to the A-rank player, he said, "Stop messing around. If you could use props, would you still be throwing punches?"
This hit the A-rank player's sore spot. Before throwing the punch, he had indeed planned to kill Xu Huo in close combat. But he hadn't expected that a B-rank player like Xu Huo would be evenly matched. Now he was no longer confident.
After a pause, he laughed. "I heard you're a Non-Ticket Player. Clearing the instance dungeon? That probably has nothing to do with you."
A B-rank instance dungeon in a sealed venue—someone who entered by accident without a ticket could never get out.
"I seriously doubt how you managed to get into an A-rank player's team," Xu Huo said. "Haven't you realized yet? This isn't a sealed instance dungeon."
Both of them were startled but quickly caught on. Yellow Hair was overjoyed. "Even if we fail to clear it, we won't be trapped in the temple until we die!"
"Exactly." Xu Huo added, "If we're lucky, we might even last fourteen days."
Yellow Hair was about to ask what he meant by "if we're lucky" when the A-rank player across from him, overcome with rage, violently kicked a nearby stone at Xu Huo and lunged forward right behind it!
"You have to die here!"
Xu Huo exchanged a few blows with him barehanded, gradually luring him to the nearest temple wall. Watching the approaching player, he gave a slight smile, then thrust his hand into the wall.
The A-rank player sensed something was wrong and turned to flee, but in the next second, he heard the person behind him command, "Stop."
The A-rank player's mind seemed to freeze the instant he heard that word. He involuntarily stopped in his tracks. Even though he snapped out of it a moment later, he had already missed his chance to escape—a statue of the Goddess was being dragged out of the wall by Xu Huo!
In fact, there were fifteen statues of the Goddess within the temple grounds. Less than a third were openly displayed; the rest were hidden, only triggered by the unluckiest players. Xu Huo had simply borrowed one to use.
The hidden statues were much larger—or at least, they appeared larger in the eyes of players who had endured several days of mental interference. So when it surged out from the wall, the A-rank player had nowhere to run. All the eyes on the statue focused on him. Before he could escape, they burst open one after another, turning into a mass of eyeballs that climbed up his legs!
"Fake! It's all fake!" The A-rank player hypnotized himself while simultaneously activating five interference props and devices hanging on his body. The sudden burst of power caused some of the eyeballs to lose their vitality. But not all the eyes were affected by the props. Some even actively moved toward the props, covering the interfering forces with multiple or even ten times their number until the effect weakened or failed entirely!