Chapter 2282: Director Xu
This wasn't the end. Old Cai, who had just drunk water, suddenly started vomiting, and the black water he threw up actually contained things like severed fingers. Immediately after, the son of the old lady from Room 603 came out, demanding his body back. Old Cai kicked the severed finger over, but the other party simply lifted his clothes, revealing an empty chest and abdomen.
Old Cai was completely freaked out. He joined forces with Zhu Xiaojin to beat the living corpse to death and burn it.
Turning around, they encountered the little girl in the red dress again. This time, the child didn't let them catch her. When the rubber ball rolled over, Tang Yu was dragged into the floorboards.
Even though Old Cai and the others broke through the staircase immediately, Tang Yu had already vanished without a trace. At the same time, their senses were weakened, and they were basically clueless about what was happening in the neighboring building.
At this point, Old Cai started worrying that Xu Huo might actually kill someone, so he suggested they go find Xu Huo directly.
"We couldn't even find that female player earlier. Now that the danger level here has clearly increased, where are we supposed to look for him?" Zhu Xiaojin said. "Anyway, Brother Xu just wants to test the props. Why don't we just head straight to Building 7 and check on the substitutes?"
Old Cai didn't voice his concerns, but acting together was obviously better than splitting up, so the three of them headed straight for Building 7.
However, they didn't expect that reaching Building 7 wouldn't be so easy either. First, they got stuck in a ghostly loop, wandering around in circles for a long time. When they finally managed to get out, a funeral procession inexplicably appeared. As the paper money scattered, the Painting Woman disappeared.
Then Zhu Xiaojin saw the female player inside the coffin.
He forced the coffin open. The female player, still trapped and bound, was terrified. She screamed and tried to crawl out, but was quickly pulled back by a pair of bluish hands. The coffin lid was resealed, and the funeral procession continued on its way.
"Did I see that right? I think I saw Tang Yu in the funeral procession," Zhu Xiaojin suddenly said as the procession passed by. As he spoke, he couldn't help but chase after it for a closer look, only to find that the person's face didn't match.
"Am I seeing things, or is this the prop effect?" Zhu Xiaojin turned back and scratched his head. But the next second, he and Old Cai were suddenly teleported into the coffin.
Feeling themselves being carried along, the two quickly broke out of the coffin. The funeral procession stared at them with a dazed, fixated look that sent chills down their spines.
Without wasting any more time, they hurried toward Building 7. However, the basement was already occupied by several living corpses. They were attacked repeatedly, and since props targeting humans didn't work, they had to engage in hand-to-hand combat with these things. After spending some time getting through the passage and opening the freezer, they saw a dozen or so versions of themselves neatly lined up inside.
Anyone seeing this would feel physically ill. Zhu Xiaojin swallowed hard. "You can play it like this?"
It wasn't just about playing it like this—one "Zhu Xiaojin" had already sat up!
"That fast?" Zhu Xiaojin didn't want to experience "pain sharing" again and urged Old Cai to leave quickly. But when Old Cai turned around, he had a face identical to Zhu Xiaojin's!
Zhu Xiaojin reflexively kicked him and ran off without looking back.
"Are you okay!" Old Cai, having been kicked for no reason, couldn't get angry and could only hurry after him.
When they got back to the ground, Zhu Xiaojin was gone. The female ghost standing by the third-floor window had turned into the Painting Woman, and on the top floor, a Tang Yu with a ghost clinging to her back was about to jump off the building...
"Old Xu, stop messing around," Old Cai felt his props and limbs becoming increasingly unresponsive, realizing he was suffering from mental interference and gradually losing sensory accuracy. He had to shout a warning: "Tang Yu is about to jump!"
At that moment, a cold wind blew. Old Cai blinked, and everything before him vanished. He was still in the basement, but this time he was lying in the freezer. Beside the freezer stood another "him," slowly closing the freezer door. Next to him, Zhu Xiaojin was still chattering away...
"Zhu..." He tried to call Zhu Xiaojin's name, but his mouth wouldn't open. The freezer closed completely—he seemed to have become a substitute that couldn't move yet.
A banging sound came from inside the freezer. Zhu Xiaojin, about to leave, looked back. "These substitutes are coming to life fast. Let's go find Brother Xu first. If we can find him before he finds us, we win!"
Zhu Xiaojin and "Old Cai" left together.
As soon as they reached the ground, "Old Cai" suddenly hugged Zhu Xiaojin from behind, pressing tightly against him.
Zhu Xiaojin was startled. He felt the person behind him getting heavier, and his skin seemed to be melting and wrapping around him!
Goosebumps erupted all over. Zhu Xiaojin forcefully peeled the person off his back using a prop and sent him off with a bomb.
"Old Cai!" He realized what had happened and quickly turned back to open the freezer, pulling out the real Old Cai. "Are you okay..."
Before he could finish, a punch landed on his face. Zhu Xiaojin looked up angrily, only to see a translucent ghost attached to Old Cai's back, as if controlling him.
"Damn it!" He charged forward with a flurry of punches and kicks.
The translucent shadow finally disappeared. Old Cai temporarily regained his senses, and the two hurried toward the ground. As soon as they got out, they ran into Tang Yu, who was rushing over. Seeing them, she said, "Great! I finally found you!"
Zhu Xiaojin glanced down at her feet—she was walking on her tiptoes!
"Tang Yu" inevitably got beaten up and then disappeared.
"Damn it, I can barely tell if people are real anymore." Zhu Xiaojin looked up at the pitch-black sky. "Brother Xu isn't trying to drive us crazy, is he?"
No sooner had he spoken than the female player who had been carried in the coffin crawled out from the stairwell, with half a living corpse gnawing on her calf behind her.
Old Cai and Zhu Xiaojin exchanged a glance, went over to rescue her, and Zhu Xiaojin joked, "This is way scarier than what you directed."
"I'm not a Mental Evolver." The female player clearly hadn't expected that props could achieve such good results in the hands of a Super Evolver. The players' level of mental interference had been greatly enhanced, and it wouldn't take seven days to complete a substitute.
"He can only be in Building 5 or Building 7. Go up and find him," the female player said through gritted teeth. "Even if he doesn't really intend to kill, if you're killed by a living corpse or ghost, your spirit will be severely damaged. You don't want that kind of death experience."
The three of them climbed upstairs.
The little girl in the red dress appeared again, holding Tang Yu's hand.
Not knowing whether this Tang Yu was real or fake, Zhu Xiaojin had no choice but to seal both of them in a space barrier. What followed were not only living corpses but also the endlessly repeating floors and the old lady.
After blowing up a floor to successfully ascend, they encountered the "murderer" again.
The difference was that this "murderer" looked exactly like Zhu Xiaojin. The other party charged at him, shouting, "How dare you impersonate me? I'll chop you to death!" (Chapter End)