Chapter 2288: Trapped in Time
So many cannibal players?
The sound of swallowing made the newly arrived players wary, but when they saw the numbers tattooed on the bare backs of some of the people, they suddenly understood—it wasn’t that these people were cannibal players, but that they were too hungry!
“My personal panel won’t open! The luggage compartment won’t open either!” someone immediately said.
“Is there no food here?”
“How is that possible! Didn’t those who entered the game before eat their own things?”
“Could it be that the game we entered is different from before!”
The other players in the room were clearly used to this. They watched the newcomers panic with cold, mocking expressions, as if laughing at them—and at their former selves.
“If you want to live a little longer, start conserving your energy now.” A female player in the corner finally spoke. “No matter how loud you shout, you can’t conjure up food, and you can’t get out.”
“What exactly is going on here?” a newly arrived player quickly asked. “Hasn’t the game started yet? Is there any hint?”
“No, nothing at all.” The female player seemed unwilling to waste more time with them. She pointed to the room’s only exit—the door. “If you want to know, go out and see for yourselves.”
A few players exchanged glances, worried it might be a trap, and didn’t move.
The female player didn’t even have the energy to mock them. She turned sideways and closed her eyes, looking exhausted.
Xu Huo walked over and handed her an energy candy cube. “How long have you been in here?”
The female player caught the scent of food, snatched the candy without hesitation, and shoved it into her mouth without even tearing open the wrapper. Too busy chewing, she couldn’t speak, but her eyes remained fixed on Xu Huo.
“Brother, do you have any more? Give me a little,” another player nearby leaned in, swallowing hard. “You can ask me whatever you want to know.”
Xu Huo reached into his pocket, then said, “Unfortunately, I only had one. I thought even if I entered the game, I could still eat the food I brought. I didn’t expect this situation.”
The player looked disappointed and unwilling, his gaze shifting back to the female player still chewing. The sweet fragrance made his eyes turn green. Ignoring those around him, he lunged at the female player, pinned her down, and tried to bite her mouth!
“Bang!” The female player wasn’t one to be trifled with. She kicked him away, pressed the wrapper in her mouth a few times, then spat it out—but she didn’t throw it away. Instead, she put it in her pocket.
This scene stunned the newly arrived players. Even cannibal players, except during the initial trial and before it, rarely acted so disgracefully. Moreover, these people were normal players. After evolution, the enhancement of their physical abilities gave them greater endurance against hunger, thirst, heat, and cold. Even in some instances lacking food and water, they could hold out for a while without bringing supplies. Hungry, yes, but not to the point of losing reason. Yet the people in this room were clearly starving mad!
Starving to death... This method of death, long forgotten by players, crashed back into their minds in this form, bringing with it an inescapable despair like a dull knife cutting through flesh.
“I’ll answer your question.” The female player walked back to Xu Huo and said, “I’ve been in here for about ten days or so. I can’t remember the exact time. It’s hard to leave marks in these rooms, and even if you do, they disappear after a while. All timing tools are useless. I can only rely on feeling to judge how long I’ve been in.”
“Are there other rooms here?” Xu Huo asked.
“Many.” The female player immediately turned to lead the way. Without any hesitation, she opened the door and walked out first.
Xu Huo followed and found that behind the door was another identical room. This room also trapped some players, and in the corner hung a corpse—exactly the same as the one in the previous room.
“Why do the dead people look exactly the same?” the newly arrived players asked as they followed. “Twins?”
“Not twins. Keep watching and you’ll understand.” This room had two doors. The female player walked straight to the opposite side and opened the other door.
Unexpectedly, after passing through, it was another room with no furnishings, just a few dispirited players scattered around.
And of course, another hanging corpse.
“The same corpse.” Xu Huo glanced at it. “It’s the same person, but the state of the corpse is different.”
“Good eyes,” the female player said, walking to the opposite side of the room and knocking on the closed door. “Except for the first room, every room after that has two doors. No matter how many rooms or doors you open, there’s always a room behind the room, and a door behind the door. And every room has a hanging corpse, all with the same face and clothes, but at different stages of decay.”
“What does this mean?” another player asked. “How can one corpse appear in different places, and so many times?”
“I don’t know either,” the female player said. “If I knew, I might have gotten out by now.”
Xu Huo focused on the hanging corpse, then moved closer to examine it carefully. “Has anyone touched these corpses?”
“Not only touched, but eaten,” the female player said, without any sense of disgust at her own words. “Newcomers try to find clues, but after a while, they start looking at it like food. Even if you eat it, it reappears in the same spot the next day. Over time, no one dares to eat it anymore.”
The newly arrived players instinctively felt nauseous. Judging by the decay level, the corpses in the later rooms might turn into dried remains or skeletons. With so many players, they couldn’t exactly line up to eat the corpse from the first room...
Xu Huo circled the corpse once, then stopped and said, “I’ll go check the rooms further ahead.”
“I’m not going with you anymore.” The female player felt she had repaid the candy cube and turned back to the first room.
This time, Xu Huo went to open another door. Holding the handle, he turned back and asked, “Are you coming?”
Of course they had to go. Since there were no hints, they had to find clues themselves.
But after walking through dozens of rooms, it was exactly as the female player had said. All the rooms were identical. Apart from the varying degrees of decay, even the angle at which the corpses hung was the same.
“Is this really one-third of the game?” one of the group, a buzz-cut man, couldn’t help asking. “Since there are no hints, maybe we didn’t enter the game at all!”
But the others shattered that illusion. “All the rooms are the same, but the decay of the corpses is different. Even someone who doesn’t understand super evolution would think of time changes. Isn’t one-third of the game a place filled with temporal and spatial power? Just look at the city center and those inexplicable water cubes. This place must be full of time power we can’t comprehend. In other words...”
“We’re trapped in time.”