Chapter 2764: Hallucinations and Xenomorphs
"If I ever reach that point, I definitely won't die without dignity like that." Chai Sheng suddenly said.
"Look on the bright side, maybe you won't live long enough to see degeneration appear." Xu Huo comforted him.
"Haha, makes sense." Chai Sheng's left hand, clad in a metal glove, scraped hard across the blade. After a sharp grinding sound, the long knife's body appeared even more gleaming. With a forceful swing, he strode forward, "Let me send them off on their final journey!"
The two fought their way through, taking out over twenty xenomorphs in a row before finally encountering an empty room. This was probably a staff rest area, with no important documents, but there was a duty roster with numbered entries.
"Do no evil, fear no knock at the door," Chai Sheng tapped the notebook. "Look, doing this kind of work, they don't even dare connect to the terminal, and names are replaced with numbers."
Xu Huo glanced at him, then turned to head to the next room. But the moment he stepped out the door, the same thing happened again. The door slammed shut behind him, and then the corridor sank downward.
"What the hell..." Chai Sheng's voice disappeared beside the closing wall gap.
Xu Huo merely looked up briefly before shifting his gaze, then swept his eyes over a monitoring device embedded in the wall ahead.
This was the second underground level. Compared to the brightness above, there were fewer lights here and it was dimmer, as if the lighting had been deliberately lowered to accommodate something.
"Tap, tap, tap..." Xu Huo's footsteps echoed through the spacious area. After walking a short distance, he stopped in front of a heavy metal door.
Behind the door came an irregular breathing sound.
The other party probably knew someone was outside, because as he approached, their breathing kept getting heavier—logically, a player shouldn't make such a rookie mistake, but as the breathing rhythm quickened, the sound became more pronounced.
After about half a minute, the metal door was violently pushed open. The curly-haired female player who had been taken away earlier burst out, launching a frenzied attack on Xu Huo. More than killing intent, what drove her was sheer terror!
The "Time Ring" couldn't activate under the interference of the Punishment City, but that didn't stop Xu Huo from using it as cover to invoke time power. After freezing her in place, he manipulated space tangents to bleed both her arms, then locked her up before releasing the time control.
The pain somewhat sobered the curly-haired woman. Her eyes trembled, and it took several seconds before she could clearly see the person in front of her. Realizing the situation, she said wearily, "It was you outside the door the whole time?"
"Who else?" Xu Huo countered.
The curly-haired woman first injected herself with an antidote, then put on a mental interference device before saying, "I think I was hallucinating. I mistook the person coming in for a xenomorph... a very powerful xenomorph."
"Then again, how could there be such a powerful xenomorph."
"How did you get down here?"
She gestured for Xu Huo to release her.
But Xu Huo didn't lift the space lockdown. Instead, he said, "Wait a little longer. This place is filled with spiritual power. I can't be sure you're truly awake."
The curly-haired woman found this reasonable and didn't insist, simply preparing her props for emergencies.
She first recounted her experience.
After being taken away by the staff, she was directly sent to a room underground. Unable to break through with her props, she could only wander around the underground. At first, she only encountered ordinary xenomorphs—more annoying than terrifying, a mild nuisance.
But after entering a room filled with multiple xenomorphs submerged in liquid, things changed. First, several xenomorphs burst through the walls, chasing her into a room painted entirely black. After passing through that room, she encountered a special xenomorph that appeared and disappeared unpredictably. Many of her props were ineffective against it. Though she could barely defend herself, she couldn't keep up with its speed or track its movements, forcing her to creep cautiously down the corridor.
Throughout the entire process, she was attacked over a dozen times, yet she never even got a clear look at what the thing was.
"You have no wounds on you." Xu Huo said, implying suspicion that she had seen hallucinations.
The curly-haired woman smiled and pulled out a shield prop, which had several fist-sized dents on it.
Xu Huo glanced at the prop that was nearly battered to pieces. "Are you sure there was only one?"
"Definitely one." The curly-haired woman said firmly. "If there were more, I wouldn't have had it this easy."
Xu Huo nodded, then said, "Since we can't find the exit anyway, rather than waiting to die, it's better to deal with the problem first."
He patted the wall beside him. "If this place can trap us, it can definitely trap xenomorphs too. Let's go check out the room you mentioned first."
The curly-haired woman didn't know what he was planning, but this was indeed the only option. With the xenomorph constantly interfering, they couldn't search for the exit either.
The two soon arrived at the room she had described. However, upon entering, the curly-haired woman was startled. "Why..."
Before she could finish, she shut her mouth and warily distanced herself from Xu Huo.
Xu Huo ignored her and instead looked at several cylindrical transparent vats in the room. The curly-haired woman had said earlier that they contained xenomorphs, but in reality, the three vats held players—players who had been hired alongside them.
The three had both combat wounds and bite marks. One of them was nearly cut in half at the waist, but the vat's mechanisms had already washed away the blood from their bodies, leaving the corpses pale and white.
"They should have come in after us. Why did they die here first?" The curly-haired woman began doubting herself again. "Could time be wrong too?"
"We've only been in for half an hour." Xu Huo said. "But a lot can happen in half an hour. The Punishment City is a trap. Others might have received false signals and run in. It's not surprising they got killed."
As he spoke, a black shadow suddenly lunged from the side, crashing straight into him. The force sent Xu Huo stumbling back several steps, but he grabbed back, and the thing that had hit him was locked in place by the space lockdown.
"It's a person!" The curly-haired woman exclaimed. The man, with vacant eyes and a slightly crazed expression, was the tall, burly member of their team. He had many bite wounds, his rolled skin faintly blue, and saliva uncontrollably dripping from the corner of his mouth.
"Hold him down." Xu Huo said.
The two worked together—one pinned him down, the other injected an antidote. After a while, the burly man finally calmed down, his eyes darting around before he could recognize people.
"Did you see the intelligent xenomorph?!" He sprang up as soon as he recovered.
"What intelligent xenomorph?!" The curly-haired woman snapped. "It was your hallucination!"
"Hard to say." Xu Huo pointed at the bite marks on the burly man. "How did these come about?"
"Bitten by xenomorphs." The burly man said. "Me and two others had bad luck. We stirred up a xenomorph nest and got these during the fight."
"All B-rank players. For xenomorphs to break through defenses and bite directly, there would have to be a lot of them." The curly-haired woman said. "Clearly, there aren't that many here."
The burly man was confused about the situation but insisted, "There's definitely an intelligent xenomorph here!"