# Chapter 2940: Potion Failure
At first, everything seemed normal. With one player and two ordinary people, as long as the distance wasn't too great, the instrument could properly record all their actions. But within twenty minutes, the images transmitted back began to stutter. Fortunately, it only stuttered momentarily and didn't completely shut down.
They hadn't yet walked out of Xu Huo's perception range, so he recorded the time and location while keeping an eye on the three people's condition.
After about another twenty minutes, Xu Huo told them to turn back.
Even though they had made markers beforehand and even had instruments guiding the way, all three people unconsciously deviated from their original trajectory. When they couldn't find the markers on the path, they simply claimed they were lost.
Xu Huo didn't know what kind of power was causing this cognitive deviation. He used the instrument to directly change their direction, but halfway there, two of the three people who had been talking just a second ago suddenly pitched forward stiffly. The instrument flew closer and clearly recorded their even breathing.
Xu Huo brought the player along to retrieve these two. Seeing them face-down, sleeping like dead pigs, the player exclaimed in surprise, "They can really fall asleep like this?"
"Let me see if I can wake him up!"
Saying this, he deliberately avoided looking at Xu Huo and walked straight to the sleeping person. He flipped them over and started slapping them—smack, smack, smack.
His strength was considerable. The slapped person's face immediately swelled up, visibly painful. But even so, the sleeping person showed no signs of waking up.
"Incredible!" The man sighed while continuing to slap. "Does that wisteria pollen really have such a strong sleep-inducing effect? It's truly a blessing for insomniacs!"
A perfectly good person had been beaten into a pig's head. Xu Huo spoke up, "That's enough."
Only then did the man reluctantly stop, asking excitedly, "Isn't there another one? Let me try that one too!"
Two pig-headed people lay side by side, but even after injecting the potion, they still didn't wake up for a long time.
Something wasn't right.
The wake-up potions Xu Huo had were all obtained from the Special Defense Department. Multiple attempts had proven their effectiveness, and he had just witnessed it himself. So why wasn't it working now?
He took out an instrument to check the two people's condition and found that their brains were alternating between hyperactive and calm, with both states exceeding normal human ranges.
Generally speaking, when people sleep, they are relatively relaxed, and the brain enters a "resting" phase. If someone is forcibly awakened at this time, they would have a certain reaction time and appear relatively sluggish. But if they were dreaming during sleep, the brain's activity level would differ. Overall, this is a process with obvious fluctuations. It shouldn't show these two people being overly excited one moment and overly calm the next—after all, sleeping people aren't dead; their brains are still active.
The ambush player leaned in to watch for a while before saying, "They won't just sleep to death, will they?"
"Hard to say." Xu Huo purchased new wake-up potions again, increased the dosage, and injected them into the two. After about ten minutes, they slowly began to wake up.
Once awake, they seemed normal enough. They started howling while holding their faces, their thoughts clear, and sarcastically cursing the person who had hit them.
Xu Huo's expression wasn't good. He had already used hyperdimensional space power to extensively destroy this forest, but this place was probably not just as large as it appeared to the naked eye. There might be multiple spaces hidden here that he simply hadn't noticed.
People who entered would fall asleep without warning. During this process, they could be attacked by beasts or other people. Even if they managed to wake up by luck, the difficulty of waking would increase with each subsequent sleep.
This wasn't good news. If increased sleep frequency led to longer sleep duration and greater difficulty waking, it meant that people who entered might find it impossible to wake up after falling asleep a few times.
Under these circumstances, the hunters were no longer the threat. The real danger came from the instance environment.
To avoid situations where personal panels couldn't communicate later, Xu Huo prepared several boxes of wake-up potions and placed them outside.
But the sooner people were found, the safer they would be. So after some preparation, he began moving quickly through the forest. His main goal was to destroy the areas where wisteria grew. Hyperdimensional space power could make these vines completely disappear into the air. If he was lucky enough to destroy the instance authorization book, this instance might end early.
But luck clearly wasn't on his side this time. After two hours of busy work, destroying thousands of giant wisteria plants and leaving the primeval forest riddled with holes, the instance still hadn't disappeared. Moreover, during the entire process, he had only encountered three to five people.
Three of them were ordinary people from other districts, and two were players. However, these two players had been inside longer and had a deeper understanding of the instance.
"Clearing this instance isn't that easy." One female player pointed to the mask on her face. "I lost a hunting rifle when I fought another person. Even though I killed prey afterward, the instance didn't count it."
The other player hadn't lost his hunting rifle. The two compared notes and immediately knew something was wrong. "My current prey count is 2."
That meant that as long as you killed prey, regardless of how many, the game would count it. But the female player who lost her hunting rifle didn't get any count. This indicated that either she had lost her qualification, or she needed to recover all three hunting rifles before the count would resume.
"In this damn place, I can count the people I've met on one hand. Even just killing a hundred prey is extremely difficult. My clearance task might even be doubled." The female player said somewhat dejectedly, "I'm probably facing a high-risk random instance when I get out too."
"I'm thinking about just retiring here," said the other. "At least there's no shortage of food and clothing here, and there are companions."
Hearing this, the ambush player quickly asked, "You haven't fallen asleep?"
Both were B-rank players. They had stumbled into this instance. When they entered, they were awake. Of course, they had rested in between, but it wasn't much different from their usual sleep schedule.
"You suddenly fell asleep?" The two were clearly hearing this for the first time. After listening to the ambush player's description, the female player thought for a moment and said, "Could it be that different entry states result in different levels of influence from the instance?"
"I entered while awake!" the ambush player quickly said.
"A-rank random instance—once it's touched A-rank, no instance is easy to clear." The female player looked at Xu Huo. "What do you plan to do?"
"First, destroy those wisteria." For now, he couldn't find people and had no further breakthroughs, so he could only do this basic work. At least reducing the number of wisteria would lower the concentration of hypnotic pollen, hopefully reducing the number of times people who entered would fall asleep.
"Then we'll move with you." The female player turned to look at the vast, unobstructed land behind Xu Huo, secretly swallowing before saying, "Many hands make light work. Maybe we can find a way to clear the instance."