Chapter 2245: Water Cube Trigger Medium
"It's better that there aren't any." Cheng Zhongzhi said, "Our goal isn't really to manage District 5. Whether it's forging, robbing, or stealing residence permits, it's all a crime. Who cares if we become wanted criminals? Let's report to the City Hall first."
"There are quite a few ordinary people in District 5. Their permanent residence permits use a full sheet of paper, while temporary ones use half a sheet." Xu Huo added, "Don't worry about property ownership for now."
Cheng Zhongzhi added a few more small details. After the group agreed on the areas each would be responsible for tomorrow, they found places to rest separately.
The city at night was, of course, still not peaceful. Not only were there people making moves in the shadows, but there were even those blowing up buildings.
However, the area around the Enforcement Building was relatively calm. Xu Huo spent the night copying a set of temporary city management regulations from the Bounty Platform, modified them as needed, and sent them to the City Hall overnight, demanding that the City Hall approve them and post them internally.
Time was tight; it was impossible to obtain copies of all kinds of legal texts. They only needed some common legal rules that players could easily violate in daily life.
The next morning, before the City Hall had even replied, Xu Huo had already started his operation.
Besides Zhu Xiaojin and the others, the Painting Woman, as a newly joined player, along with two household robots, came out to help.
The household robots could input data quickly, so they were responsible for the more densely populated residential areas. The requirements were low; they distributed paper uniformly, had the residents register their own information, and then collected it. Anyone missed had to go to the Enforcement Building within three days to make up the registration.
Xu Huo focused his attention on the players.
There were quite a few empty houses in Buliucheng. After arriving, players generally didn't choose to stay in hotels but instead randomly found empty houses to squat in. If it was truly an empty house, it didn't matter before, but from the moment of registration, players could only stay in their own places and could no longer sneak into other people's residences at will.
Players also had only three days to register. Either they cooperated, or after three days, they would become vagrants without residence permits. Loitering on the streets was fine, and checking into hotels was fine, but once they were found sneaking into private premises, the temporary law enforcement officers had the right to arrest and shoot them.
To be honest, it was quite comical when Zhu Xiaojin and the others went around with recorders to promote this. Not to mention the difficulty of implementing this process, would the players really cooperate with them?
However, this comical atmosphere turned murderous after Xu Huo killed twelve players in a row who "not only refused to cooperate but also attacked the enforcement officers." In short, either don't stay in District 5, or if you stay, you have to follow the rules.
Not every player had a large unlocked area, and not every player was clear about the boundaries of their unlocked area. District 5 wasn't small. An ordinary player would need a lot of manpower to do this, but with Xu Huo around, quickly searching for and locking onto players wasn't that difficult.
Of course, there were also those who cooperated. Some were seeking cooperation, and some were players who had been stranded in Buliucheng for a long time and could only continue living there. They also brought bad news: although the "One-Third City" instance had a time limit, once you entered the "One-Third Game," you couldn't leave the instance even when the time limit was up.
As for whether there were players who had completed the clearance mission and left, they weren't too sure.
When asked about the "One-Third Game," sorry, most people's memories of the first half of their lives were completely wiped clean. Two players even almost forgot how to speak when they came out—losing memory was the better outcome. As long as they behaved and didn't enter the game again, it was fine. But judging from the records in their luggage compartments, some people had gone missing after playing the "One-Third Game" and never appeared again.
Most recorders and communicators were malfunctioning or damaged, and none had captured anything about the game.
So, the worst outcome of this game was death, not just memory loss.
Additionally, Xu Huo and the others learned of another possible way to trigger the game.
Besides "going out at night" and "entering an unlocked area," the third way to trigger the game was random.
"You should have all seen a Rubik's Cube, right? It's a thing that looks like a Rubik's Cube, seemingly woven together from water, forming the shape of a cube. It appears randomly in the city, often just flashing by. Anyone it touches disappears immediately." The stranded player Ruan Hong said, "A player I was with before saw with his own eyes a person touched by the Water Cube disappear from the city, and when they reappeared, they had lost their memory."
"You haven't seen it yourself?" Xu Huo asked.
Ruan Hong shook her head. "I heard that Water Cube appears and disappears mysteriously, its movement trajectory is very strange, like it's alive, automatically seeking people out. I've been in Buliucheng for so long, and I've only met two people who had seen it and still remembered it, but both of them have disappeared now. They might have died in the One-Third Game."
Another player who was with Ruan Hong said, "We've long passed the instance time limit, and we've missed the next month's instance. Even in an unlimited-time instance, it counts as a clearance failure. Going out means facing a high-risk instance. We thought about it and just gave up."
"Haven't you heard the saying that the more people play the game, the safer it is?" Cheng Zhongzhi asked.
The two exchanged a glance. "We've heard it. It seems to have come from the city center. Some people say it's news released by the City Hall. Whether it's true or not, we don't care anymore. Compared to dragging more people into the game to share the risk, not playing that game is the safest."
The Painting Woman handed them the completed residence permits.
"Thank you." Ruan Hong thanked them and left with her companion.
"There should be quite a few players who know about the Water Cube's existence." Cheng Zhongzhi said, "These people are ruthless enough. There wasn't a single leak on the Message Collection Terminal."
"Since there are rumors, it means that some players must have left the game without losing their memory." Xu Huo said, "They might be the ones who won the game."
"Why don't you ask the City Hall?" Cheng Zhongzhi suggested again.
"If the rumors are true, then the City Hall is also in the One-Third Game. Logically, the more people who lose the game, the safer they are." Xu Huo said, "So why would they reveal the game's content? Besides, there's another theory that this game was originally created by the City Hall."
"Water Cube... it sounds like a trigger medium for a random instance," Cheng Zhongzhi said casually. "Could it be that Buliucheng has a bug? Two instances stuck here?"
The possibility was too small.
When the situation is unclear, it's best to stay put.
After a busy day, the local residents were quite cooperative, but the players from other zones either went to other districts or avoided them. Xu Huo was only one person, no matter what, he couldn't block everyone. After registering about twenty players, he called it a day.
When they returned, the Enforcement Building was already in pieces. The upper floors were leaning this way and that, only the first floor was barely accessible, and the armed robots at the entrance were gone.
Xu Huo retrieved a video recording from a recorder placed at a street corner. The person who did it, confident in their ability to change their appearance, hadn't even worn a mask.
"Good." He directly used the video information of these people to submit a wanted application.