Chapter 3003: The Neatly Arranged Dining Table
"He has a way to counter the reflection people?" Wang Chengren asked in surprise, pressing further, "Did he say what it was?"
"You're so dumb," the Painting Woman said, looking at him. "If he really had a way, would he still be dead?"
Wang Chengren fell silent.
The two employees clearly thought the same thing—since the person was already dead, no method would be of any use.
"Save us, I don't want to die!" one of them choked out.
Xu Huo couldn't guarantee their safety, but he told them to stick with him.
When they stepped out of the small building where the employees lived, the sky outside seemed even darker.
"I feel so cold." Wang Chengren's teeth began to chatter.
"Hallucination," Xu Huo said.
In truth, he also felt the air getting colder, but this was likely not an actual drop in temperature—rather, it was a direct sensation brought on by the deepening interference of mental power. After being swept along by the black shadow earlier, they had probably entered a stronger reflection space.
Xu Huo looked at the other two. Though they didn't look well, they were still lucid, so he asked, "Besides the reflection people killing others, have you noticed anything else? Any hallucinations? Have you seen your own reflection people?"
Of the two, the man who had found a tooth in his dumplings had never seen his own reflection person, but he had repeatedly seen different twisted shadows in the reflections of windows.
Although these shadows looked like him, they would make strange movements whenever he turned around or had his back to them—like sneering, standing still sideways, or reaching out toward him from outside. He had asked others, and almost everyone had experienced this.
The Painting Woman nodded seriously, indicating she had too, but with a difference—she also reached out to herself in the mirror, but the self in the mirror was too stupid to understand her hints at all.
The Painting Woman was special. Though the instance had imitated her appearance, she wasn't truly human after all, making it difficult to complete the reflection person puzzle by peering into her heart.
In this regard, the Painting Woman had an advantage over anyone else.
As for these two employees, the fact that they hadn't been attacked by their reflection people yet was likely because, like Wang Chengren, they belonged to the type with stronger mental defenses.
That's right—Wang Chengren was unreliable, but his mental world was very self-consistent. Just seeing how he could instantly accept his completely overturned past was proof enough.
A person's mental defenses were truly a marvelous existence. Sa Dun, a Mental Evolver, had nearly been killed on sight, while someone as strong as Xu Huo had also gained a reflection person of comparable strength in an extremely short time.
The degree to which a reflection person formed didn't seem to have much to do with an individual's strength... but this involved a person's will, which was inherently something difficult to measure.
"I've seen my own reflection person," the other person said. "It was standing behind me while I was eating."
He wasn't stupid either. At the very least, every dead person he had seen had been attacked by their own reflection person. The more the reflection person resembled the real person, the stronger it must be. So after discovering this problem, he had become quiet and reserved. But those reflection people seemed to have seen their pasts—no matter how hard they tried, the reflection people would become more and more like them. He knew something about the dead colleagues. Those reflection people were the extreme versions of those individuals. Everyone had some temper, but a normal person would never reach the level of a psychopath. The way they looked, they couldn't even be called human anymore!
"Am I going to die soon?" the man couldn't help but cry. "I don't want to die. I still have a wife and kids outside..."
"Who doesn't?" Wang Chengren couldn't help but say. "Stop your whining. Have you seen horror movies? The more scared you are, the faster you die."
"You sure are optimistic," Xu Huo said.
What else could Wang Chengren say? He hadn't even been able to be the head of his household, and on the instance's dining table, he had only been a foil to Ms. Yao.
The group hadn't delayed long before this reflection space also began to produce reflection people. The reflection person of one player came over and invited them to the dining room.
"I don't want to go, I don't want to go..." the two employees trembled.
But unlike the previous reflection people, when the two refused, that reflection person instantly dissipated from its spot and reappeared behind them, grabbing them and pulling them toward the dew-covered plants behind.
"Don't be in such a hurry." The materialized mental power caught all three of them at once. The next moment, Xu Huo also appeared behind the reflection person. He cast "Mirror Space" over the other party, and this shadow, which was almost indistinguishable from a real person, began to jump and writhe like boiling water, quickly collapsing into a mass of black shadow.
"Mirror Space" was another application of concentrated mental power. The fact that it worked meant that the power level of most reflection people in this instance did not exceed his upper limit.
Again, this was somewhat similar to the Wisteria Instance. Although it was an A-rank instance, the operation of the reflection people still gave Xu Huo a feeling of using a small force to move a great weight. Compared to relying on absolute power to kill players, the reflection people seemed to prefer using finesse—after all, once a person's psychological defenses were breached, killing them was far too easy.
"Let's go to the dining room." Xu Huo looked at Wang Chengren and the other two.
Wang Chengren and the others had no room to refuse and could only follow him to the dining room.
Unexpectedly, this time the dining room was so full. Besides Xu Huo and his group, Wei Mang, the Enforcement Department players, the ticket players who had entered later, the Wang family employees, and the restoration workers—almost everyone who was likely still alive was present.
And this was Wang Chengren's first time appearing at such a gathering. The others' expressions changed when they saw him.
Before Wang Chengren could even speak, he saw the reflection person of Wang Chengren walking out from the other door. He immediately began to shake, muttering unconsciously, "I'm going to die, I'm going to die, I'm going to die..."
But that reflection person didn't pay him any attention. As before, it sat down at one end of the dining table with Ms. Yao at the other.
Since so many people were present, of course all the reflection people had also arrived. Whether or not they corresponded to a real person, all the reflection people had gathered around the dining table.
A food cart was pushed over, and a huge platter was lifted onto the table. Sa Dun and the female player's faces were pale, while a strange middle-aged man sitting at one corner of the table suddenly spoke up, "Such a big platter—it can't be a whole roasted lamb, can it?"
"Ugh!" Someone retched. Nothing other than human "food" could appear on the table. What a whole roasted lamb corresponded to, those who had participated in several dinners could naturally imagine.
The middle-aged man wasn't a first-timer at these dinners either. He glanced at the reflection person staring intently at his back, sneered, and said nothing more.
The lid of the platter was lifted. Ten heads were neatly arranged in two rows, their faces facing the seats on either side.
These were all familiar faces.
One of the restoration workers had reached his limit. He grabbed a dinner knife and lunged at Ms. Yao at the head of the table. But the moment he stood up, his reflection person swept behind him like a gust of sand, pressing tightly against him while pushing him forward into the tableware.
With a "clatter," the two of them appeared on the reflective surface of the platter. In another dining room, that worker had his face cut, followed by his hands, arms, and legs. His reflection person seemed intent on peeling off his skin.
"Slap!" Another dark-skinned female player sitting nearby threw her fork, wrapped in a napkin, onto the plate, blocking the horrifying and bloody scene.
Since so many people had gathered for this dinner, they had no energy left to worry about anyone else's predicament.