Chapter 2584: A-Rank Instance "Night Parade"
Jing Shi fell silent. Under these circumstances, she really couldn't force herself to insist that Xu Huo leave against her conscience. The city was in such chaos that the Enforcement Department was likely stretched thin, and even rescue operations were being conducted conditionally.
Sure enough, when they arrived at the Enforcement Department building near Yangming Tower, the building was already packed inside and out. Aside from those seeking help for missing relatives and friends, the rest were people who didn't dare wander around, hoping the Enforcement Department could arrange for their evacuation. Jing Shi and the others couldn't even squeeze their way in for a while.
In the end, Jing Shi had to contact a friend in the Enforcement Department before someone came to call them inside.
The person receiving them was a squad leader from some enforcement team. Facing Jing Shi, he was quite frank. "The available manpower in the enforcement teams has already been dispatched. People have been arranged at Yangming Tower. If the missing people can be found, your child will be rescued along with them. Just relax for now—a large number of A-rank players are already rushing over from other cities."
Sending a dedicated team to rescue one person was out of the question.
That squad leader was also very busy. After giving his explanation, he hurriedly left.
Jing Shi held on with sheer determination, refusing to leave. Before long, the two players guarding Xiao Chuan finally arrived. They had just come out of Yangming Tower and quickly explained the situation inside.
They had initially joined up with Xiao Chuan and his friends. After visiting the museum, the kids had suggested finding a place to play, and Yangming Tower seemed like a good spot. So the children had stayed there until dark.
Xiao Chuan had suddenly disappeared while going to the restroom with a companion. The moment his locator signal vanished, the two players rushed in to search, but he was already gone. The three adults who had been in the restroom at the same time were detained and interrogated. All three confirmed they had seen the half-grown child enter a stall, but as for how he disappeared, they genuinely had no idea.
The two players initially assumed it was a kidnapping. After notifying the enforcement team, they began reviewing surveillance footage to see if anyone had been following them—when someone suddenly disappears, the first thought is always that a player was responsible. If they weren't caught at the scene, it would be very difficult to track them down afterward. The only option was to look for clues first and wait for the kidnappers to make contact.
But just ten or so minutes later, more people began disappearing from Yangming Tower one after another. The remaining children were taken away by the Enforcement Department, and the two players began searching the building.
As the number of missing persons grew, they realized this wasn't an ordinary disappearance case. To find Xiao Chuan, they walked throughout the building, hoping they too might be pulled into the instance. But to their surprise, they kept circling around until now without ever getting in.
By this point, they understood—Yangming Tower was an instance restricted zone, not merely an entrance to a normal random instance.
Xu Huo had already finished reading the instance background and known clues published by the local government.
First, the instance background. Centered around the Cultural Street's night parade activities, combined with the customs and culture of District 001, it formed a massive night parade performance venue. Aside from last night's horror theme, all the night parade themes from the Cultural Street's original program schedule had become part of the instance. Anyone within the instance grounds could be randomly selected to become a member of the night parade procession.
The clearance requirement was also simple—survive seven days in the instance.
That's right. This was a timed instance. The way for players to clear it was simply to stay alive, to survive seven days.
One of the difficulties of high-level instances was that they were untimed. For an untimed instance, if you still couldn't clear it by the time the next instance's final deadline arrived, it basically counted as a failed clearance. And stranded players who then left the instance would have to face high-risk random events.
Instances below C-rank were mostly timed. Once the time limit was up, regardless of whether the clearance succeeded or failed, players could leave the instance. But such a model in high-level instances—especially A-rank instances—meant the difficulty would be greatly increased.
And the feedback from players who subsequently entered the instance confirmed this.
Currently known clues: anyone within the instance grounds could be randomly selected as a "Night Parade" team member. Once selected, the person would be fitted with a hood. This hood would be attached to the person's body and could not be removed.
Those wearing hoods had a certain probability of losing their sanity, and some among them would randomly kill people. But if a hooded person was killed, the hood would transfer to the killer—this applied to everyone without exception.
Already, some advanced players had hoods put on them, and neither items nor surgical tools could remove them.
The second point was that those wearing hoods weren't just the selected team members—there were also members of the original night parade procession. Some of these "members" were mannequins, while others were animated props. The instance boss should also be among them.
When original night parade members were killed, whether they were mannequins or props, their hoods would also transfer to the killer—this was also the reason several advanced players had ended up with hoods.
The instance hadn't been running for long, and since it was a survival instance, players had no additional clearance requirements, so it wasn't possible to grasp more specific instance details in advance.
But from what could be seen so far, the biggest trap—and the most important thing to watch out for—was that you must not kill hooded night parade procession members.
As for the instance restricted zone, there was still no news.
However, A-rank players from other cities had already begun arriving one after another. There weren't that many tickets available, so some of them chose to enter the instance restricted zone—both for rescue purposes and to explore the instance.
For everyone within the instance grounds, as long as their freedom wasn't restricted, they could enter and exit the instance. But entering the instance restricted zone was different—at the very least, it would be very difficult to come back out before the instance ended.
Of course, there was also bad news. Some rescue players had arrived, but one after another, several more cities had seen ghost hoods randomly killing people and instance restricted zones appearing. This meant the coverage area of this A-rank instance had far exceeded the government's predictions.
"Just having a large instance area would be one thing, but every city has instance restricted zones appearing," said the bearded player standing behind Jing Shi, his expression grim. "And there's still no news coming out of the instance restricted zones."
This necessitated considering the possibility that the instance restricted zone's space could sever the connection between players and the game.
"Normally, this kind of situation shouldn't occur," Xu Huo said. Unless specific conditions were met, an instance restricting players' personal panels was essentially cheating—what difference did that make from directly dragging ordinary people into an instance?
"If that's not the case, then it's most likely the government blocking the news," the bearded player said. "If the government is blocking the news, there's only one reason—to avoid causing panic."
The instance level, background, clearance requirements, and some clues had all been published. Only the instance restricted zone remained completely silent. How severe did the situation have to be for the government to feel compelled to do this?