Chapter 2451: The Hidden Person
The seventh day dawned.
The villagers didn’t understand why they chose to stay in a drafty pavilion instead of using the houses, but they respected the decision. The children and young people who had grown familiar with the Painting Woman over the past two days even brought some breakfast.
Xu Huo benefited from this as well, not having to gnaw on dry rations.
Other players also began cooking.
When traveling, fresh vegetables were rarely prepared—cooking took too much time. Most relied on convenient dry rations or meal packs.
The rich aroma of food filled the village.
Several children nearby were practically drooling, but the players didn’t share with them. Unlike candy or snacks, some ingredients in the meal packs weren’t suitable for everyone. If an allergic reaction occurred, they didn’t want to take responsibility.
“We’re going mushroom picking later,” a little girl said, leaning against the Painting Woman. “It was foggy yesterday, so today’s mushrooms should be great.”
“Was it foggy yesterday?” the Painting Woman asked curiously. “I thought it was foggy everywhere.”
The little girl had some life experience. “When the fog moves, that means it’s fogging. Usually, fog doesn’t move.”
Air currents in the forest moved slowly, and without wind, the mist seemed frozen in the air. As for the fog moving, it might have been caused by players using props in the woods.
The little girl invited the Painting Woman to join them. Children weren’t allowed to go far without adults, and even for mushroom picking, several adults accompanied them. Today, the group was led by a few older women from the village.
“Sure, sure!” the Painting Woman agreed without hesitation, and she wanted to bring Xu Huo along.
This drew glances from the players who had agreed last night not to leave the village again. Bubble Bean and the Yin-Yang Master looked on with a hint of malicious hope, while others simply observed. Chi Cai offered a word of caution.
Two people had gone missing yesterday—one suspected of going mad and disappearing, the other returning half-paralyzed. Clearly, safety lay in numbers.
“I’ll go with the villagers; there will be plenty of people,” Xu Huo politely declined her offer.
Seeing that he truly wasn’t afraid of death, Bubble Bean turned his gaze to the green-haired female player and the burly man, his meaning clear: if he could come and go as he pleased, didn’t that mean he looked down on everyone else?
The green-haired female player and the burly man weren’t oblivious. He had repeatedly emphasized he wasn’t an instance player, so there was no need to stop him. Besides, having him scout ahead wasn’t a bad thing.
“Why not send a few people along?” Chi Cai suggested. “More people means more safety.”
“Why should we accommodate him?” the Yin-Yang Master said, less arrogant than the previous two days but still suppressing his anger. “The minority should yield to the majority. Shouldn’t he just stay put in the village?”
This remark successfully caught Xu Huo’s attention, and he gave the man a deep look.
The Yin-Yang Master fell silent.
Regardless, Xu Huo was determined to leave the village. But before going, he kindly offered a warning to the others. “Based on the past two days, the Hidden Friend might not be a specific, tangible thing. Whether it’s the villagers or outsiders, the figures people see are highly subjective. Add in the magnetic field disturbance here, and what the eyes see may not truly exist. This is somewhat different from mental interference.”
He smiled. “Everyone, good luck.”
As his figure disappeared into the mist, the Yin-Yang Master once again voiced his doubt. “Is he really not an instance player?”
“Whether he is or not doesn’t matter much,” the green-haired female player said solemnly. “But his words make sense. Over these days, we haven’t encountered any player playing the role of the Hidden Friend. Yang and Tian’s misfortune might have been caused by the real Hidden Friend. Besides confusing us with figures, making people lose their way without them noticing is also one of its methods.”
“If that’s the case, even if we don’t split up, a whole group walking out could suddenly disappear like that person earlier.”
The middle-aged man had vanished because he used a teleportation prop, but Bubble Bean and the others knew how Deng Guang had disappeared.
“Could there be folded space here?” the eyebrow-pierced man mused. “But the detection device didn’t find any suspicious spatial power fluctuations.”
“Folded space?” The burly man, who had been smiling, also turned serious. “Then this instance is truly hell-level difficulty.”
The sudden shift from a suspected mental-type instance to a spatial-type one was hard for everyone present to accept. Mental-type instances could at least be endured, but spatial ones—especially with elusive folded space—meant they could unknowingly fall into another space. In that case, few of their abilities would be useful.
“Could this be the real reason players were called away?” Chi Cai murmured.
Fortunately, it was a timed instance.
On the other side, Xu Huo followed the mushroom-picking group but gradually distanced himself. His goal was to test the hidden power of this instance, or perhaps to lure out the Hidden Friend. Being alone was ideal, so after greeting the Painting Woman, he trailed the group at a moderate distance.
At first, everything was normal. Even though he could only see the children’s blurry figures, as long as they weren’t too far, he could clearly observe each child’s state. But after half an hour, the leading woman suggested resting by the stream. The children in line quickened their pace, and then they slowly disappeared from Xu Huo’s perception.
It was like someone in front of you suddenly opening a door and entering another room. Once the door closed, you naturally couldn’t know what they were doing or their state inside. But it wasn’t as clean as closing a door—the spot where the children gradually vanished seemed to have a transitional zone.
Xu Huo immediately moved there. When he reached the children’s position, they—along with the Painting Woman—had completely disappeared!
He took out the Cube Space and observed the spatial power state around him. Unexpectedly, whether at the spot where the group had vanished or in his surroundings, the spatial state was relatively stable. Within the multiple-density ray range formed by the Cube Space, no new or special spatial power had suddenly inserted itself.
But as before, if the force affecting this instance wasn’t something small and specific but existed like air or space itself, it would be almost equivalent to partition space. The Cube Space could absorb and integrate well, making it difficult to observe finer details.
Without controlling the Cube Space’s range, Xu Huo let it cover more of the forest while attempting to return to the village like Yang and Tian had.
When he saw his own marker for the second time, he knew he had fallen into the trap. The ones who had disappeared weren’t the children—it was him.