Chapter 3032: The Identity of the Painting Woman
Zong Lan Zhi only reacted after the slap had already been thrown out. He rubbed his brow and said, "I'm hallucinating."
The Knife-Wound Player quickly asked, "Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." Zong Lan Zhi noticed that two more of his people were missing and pressed for their whereabouts. The Knife-Wound Player then said seriously, "Go take a look."
Zong Lan Zhi followed him into another ward and found the two lying in bed, their faces haggard, as if they had been severely injured.
"I checked them over, no problems," Liao Na said, stepping away from the bedside. "But they themselves feel like they're missing a kidney."
Zong Lan Zhi frowned, but before he could say anything, the person on the bed spoke first. "I feel like I'm missing something."
"What are you missing?"
"Maybe benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trust... maybe heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys... or maybe a conscience."
Oh, the dialogue had been updated this time.
"Is he going to dig out all our organs one by one?" the Knife-Wound Player said with a shudder. This was within a hallucination—even if their organs weren't actually being removed, they could still die under the power of suggestion.
Zong Lan Zhi had a gut feeling that the person he had just seen was Xu Huo, and what was worse than falling into a simple hallucination was that he seemed able to use the instance grounds to uncover their past. This was far worse than facing a life-or-death crisis—Xu Huo could completely use this to hold leverage over them, to grasp their lifeline!
In fact, he was overthinking it. Xu Huo had no interest in their secrets and didn't need any leverage. The only reason they were here was to be test subjects.
So over the next two days, almost every single one of them experienced two rounds of headaches, dizziness, bleeding, and fainting. And because of the doctor's treatment, more and more people had their organs "dug out," more and more people grew weak, and more and more people were locked up in the experimental building for forced treatment.
This was another kind of desperate predicament. Zong Lan Zhi and his team had strength and ability, but they could only watch themselves gradually weaken.
However, they weren't without gains. At least they had confirmed that the man-eating monster was connected to the night security guard. It was just that the man-eating monster didn't appear very frequently, so they hadn't yet witnessed the truth.
But the man-eating monster always appeared before the night security guard's patrol, which meant there had to be a hidden reason.
To avoid an even worse situation, they could only send someone as bait to lure out the man-eating monster.
This time, Liao Na stepped up. She had evolved a rather special trait that allowed her to passively retreat three meters under any attack. Before the operation, she had specifically tested it, and the trait was still working. But she wasn't sure how much longer it would last, and fearing that it might fail if they waited too long, she volunteered to be the bait.
Xu Huo didn't stop her. He let the stone statue go to contact her.
The stone statue was something he had captured from an unfinished instance site beneath the Hidden Immortal Lake. Its ability was to drag people into spatial gaps. After being placed in the Seventeenth Hospital, it had caused the hospital instance to upgrade, and at the same time, it served as both the night security guard and the man-eating monster.
The player who had disappeared earlier in the stairwell of the comprehensive building had been dragged away by it. As for where it had dragged him, Xu Huo didn't know either. But once dragged away, he might never come back.
After Liao Na entered the Third Inpatient Building ahead of the patrol time, Xu Huo sent the Painting Woman and the "Dream Lover" to follow her. The stone statue indeed appeared behind her and reached out to grab her.
Liao Na's trait activated, and she instantly retreated three meters. In doing so, she caught a glimpse of a sculpture behind her that lacked any human presence.
A stone statue! She suddenly realized, but before she could turn and flee, the stone statue appeared behind her again!
Liao Na's heart cried out in alarm, but her movements were too slow—she hadn't even turned her body around!
In a flash, two figures appeared around her. One was Zong Lan Zhi. As he shielded Liao Na, he vaporized the surrounding air, and a massive air blast erupted, sending both of them rapidly backward. In the midst of this blast, they both saw the other figure—the Painting Woman.
Zong Lan Zhi had grabbed Liao Na. She had grabbed the stone statue... yes, she had grabbed the stone statue. Half of the stone statue's body was hidden in a spatial gap, making it look as if half of it had vanished into thin air. It was also clear that it desperately wanted to return to the spatial gap, but someone was holding it back.
Setting aside the shock of witnessing such a scene, the two took the opportunity to escape from the Third Inpatient Building. As they leaped out of the building, Liao Na couldn't help but ask, "What about her?"
"She'll be fine," Zong Lan Zhi said with certainty. His mind was sharp. The Painting Woman's behavior was far too abnormal. Even if Xu Huo had given her special treatment, she shouldn't have been completely unaffected by mental power. She was working alongside sentient items, could control paper, and even dared to grab a stone statue that could drag people into space—that wasn't a space you could come back from. What ordinary player would take that risk!
What if the one controlling the paper wasn't the super item she had obtained, but herself?
What if she herself was a super item?
If that were the case, everything would make sense. Her sudden appearance, her absence from the Special Defense Department's records, her extraordinary power, and her exclusive attachment to Xu Huo—although rare, the game did have super items with sentience. On the contrary, because she was so close to being human, it could be determined that she was no ordinary special item or advanced item!
At that moment, Zong Lan Zhi couldn't help but feel both envy and admiration for Xu Huo. If he had been lucky enough to obtain a super item, when the wormhole point was reported, he would never have risked his life to save District 014.
Back then, Xu Huo was only an E-level player, a world apart from his current strength. The ones coming to snatch the super item were A-level players from the Holy Sword Society and the Eerie Sound Knights. Betting the small against the big, he had actually dared to gamble on that slim chance...
In Zong Lan Zhi's view, even if the outer zone players had rampaged through District 014 for a while, they would naturally leave once they couldn't find the super item. After all, most people had instance quotas. If they really couldn't find it, they wouldn't stay in District 014 forever. The district would suffer some losses, but compared to the future of a player who obtained a super item from the start, those losses were nothing. As long as he could grow strong, the losses could be recovered!
There had been rumors before that he was the one who played a key role in obtaining the super item, but in Zong Lan Zhi's eyes, that was absolutely not something a rational person would do. He had seen Xu Huo, had interacted with him, and knew what kind of person he was. That was why he had previously preferred to believe that the item had been snatched by an outer zone player rather than believe that someone like him would take such a dangerously reckless action!
And in these past two days, seeing the Painting Woman control paper—any fool could do anything, but a genius with maxed-out intelligence could not.