Chapter 2585: The Headpiece Cannot Be Removed
After their analysis, the results they came up with were quite dire, which completely silenced Teacher Jing Shi, who had been holding onto hope. Only after a long moment did she speak, "Let's wait for news from the rescue team."
The commotion outside the Enforcement Department building did not subside with the deepening night. As more and more people went missing, messages flooded the Message Collection Terminal, making the public increasingly uneasy. They all hoped the Enforcement Department or the government would provide a definitive explanation—how far had the rescue team progressed? Had anyone been rescued? Or were the missing already dead?
If only one city's population needed evacuation, no matter how slow the process, it wouldn't take that long. But now, the surrounding cities had also been drawn into the Instance's range, forcing people who had already been urgently evacuated to neighboring cities to undergo a second evacuation. This not only increased the difficulty of the evacuation but also rendered all the work the District Government had done previously completely futile.
By the latter half of the night, the evacuation of the city's population still hadn't been completed and had even ground to a halt. This was because there was nowhere left to evacuate to, unless long-distance Teleportation Items were used to increase the spatial span. However, the rescue teams seemed to have never arrived in force. Not only were local residents not being evacuated to farther cities, but even Aircraft had been grounded.
At the same time, as more and more players used Space Teleportation Tools, the teleportation stations originally equipped with Jamming Devices began to fail regionally. The number of similar teleportation items and devices was clearly insufficient to support the population transfer of an entire city.
Xu Huo had been closely monitoring the messages on the Message Collection Terminal. It was now confirmed that the number of cities drawn into the "Night Parade" Instance range had increased from five to eight. This was verified information from local zone players in those different cities.
"This Instance... is spreading like a plague." The three cities later drawn into the Instance range had all received evacuees.
Soon after, the local government issued an emergency notice, telling residents to return home or take shelter nearby, because nearly all the surrounding cities had fallen, and the rescue team's current equipment was insufficient to reach farther locations.
This was clearly a perfunctory excuse. District 001 could still procure large-scale Teleportation Items if needed; it wasn't impossible to save a few cities. The only explanation was that the people simply couldn't be evacuated.
From the current situation, it wasn't hard to imagine that the evacuees had likely become the Instance's tentacles. Wherever they went, that place would become a new Instance zone. Therefore, the best course of action was to seal off these eight cities that had already fallen into the Instance.
Beyond that, Xu Huo also felt that the range of the Instance's forbidden zone was expanding.
The Enforcement Department building he was in wasn't far from Yangming Building. In the past hour, three people had suddenly vanished near Yangming Building.
"What's the situation outside the city?" Xu Huo grabbed a player from the Enforcement Department.
That player was already extremely agitated. It wasn't just Xu Huo; anyone he could see, or who could see him, wanted to stop him and ask for the latest news. How could he have that much time? But as their eyes met, he inexplicably calmed down and said, "We're already sending people out of the city. Outside the city is temporarily safe."
"Outside the city" referred to the mountains and plains between cities. Since evacuating to other cities might cause the Instance zone to expand, the only option was to run to uninhabited areas, at least not dragging more people into it.
Judging from the messages on the Message Collection Terminal, all cities had started doing this.
However, just as everyone thought this was a viable solution, a video from another city topped the hottest list on the Message Collection Terminal.
Retreating outside the city, although supplies would be scarce for a while, didn't mean the Enforcement Department players in each city were idle. With so many people migrating, there were almost no incidents. The lines were orderly. In the video, people from that city were already setting up tents for shelter. The overly bright props illuminated the mountains like daylight. Under this atmosphere, most people's emotions were relatively stable. After all, this wasn't the first time they had migrated due to an Instance. Usually, before the first Instance even ended, the District Government would come up with a resettlement plan...
That's what the ordinary citizens thought, and that's what the Enforcement Team players thought. But then, a wave of darkness surged from the mountains. First, strange music covered the area. Within just a few minutes, a Night Parade procession emerged. They were like a performance troupe on a cultural street, moving while dancing. Occasionally, a performer would break away from the line and approach the audience, but not to interact—to kill.
As several heads flew off, the Enforcement Team players attacked the performers without hesitation. The performers were easy to kill; even an ordinary person could cut off their heads with a single slash. But when the skeleton inside fell, the mask on its head would automatically fly off and clamp onto the person who had just killed it!
Two Enforcement Team members were too slow to react and got their heads covered by the headpieces. When they tried to pull the headpieces off, blood first splashed out. Indeed, those headpieces seemed to have taken root in their faces and necks. Lifting the lower edge of the headpiece revealed something like blood vessels connecting to the player's skin. These blood-vessel-like things seemed to be directly connected inside the player's body. Once torn off, blood would gush from the hole-like wounds!
And for every one that was torn off, more would grow on the headpiece. When the video was zoomed in, it was clear to see that one of the players, after several attempts to pull off the headpiece, had his face covered with a dense network of these blood vessels.
The key point was that the headpiece wasn't just attached to the face; it was connected to the skull and neck—these vulnerable areas.
The players whose heads were covered dared not act rashly. The other Enforcement Team players managed to trap a few of the flying headpieces. Just as they were about to send the two affected players away together, those two players involuntarily walked into the Night Parade procession.
Their companions desperately tried to pull them out, but when they pulled, what came out were skeletons—not that the players had died, but they had swapped places with the skeletons in the original procession.
Some players used props to forcibly remove the headpieces from the Night Parade procession members. However, the consequence was that the two players died on the spot from having the headpieces ripped off. Meanwhile, some of the headpieces from the Night Parade members flew out and, like living things, chose new targets nearby.
More people were dragged in.
The video ended there. Xu Huo zoomed in on the image. He looked at the dead Enforcement Team player and saw deep holes where the blood vessels had connected to the skull. What flowed out wasn't just blood, but also white, pasty brain matter.