Chapter 429: The Other Half of the Laboratory
"Doesn't the ghost shadow appear along with the players? What's the difference?" Wan Yunrong asked.
"Think carefully. The ghost shadow hasn't appeared on the players who turned into ghosts. That means there's only one, and it's mobile. Since it can move, catching players is useless—the ghost shadow can run off anytime." Ge Pan spoke with confidence. "So the target we need to catch is the ghost shadow itself, not the players pretending to be ghosts."
"That's way too vague." Wan Yunrong said. "A ghost shadow... how are we supposed to catch that?"
"How could something appearing in an instance venue be a real ghost?" Wu Xiaonan said. "That ghost shadow might be a special prop, or maybe it's a player's prop or trait hidden here. Don't forget the corpses on the third basement level. Maybe the ghost shadow was created by some hidden player."
"But where is it hiding?" Wan Yunrong asked. "We've searched this whole place."
There was one place they hadn't searched.
The remaining sealed half of the Deep Blue Laboratory.
"We can't get through from the ground level. We'll have to find a way around the metal sealing strips." Miao Yu said. "But we tried using props to break through before, and it didn't work."
"The third basement level." Xu Huo said. "That corridor on the third basement level is blocked by corpses. It's hard to say whether there are metal sealing strips inside."
"I think it's promising. If there were metal sealing strips, why bother filling the corridor with corpses? And if a player was really controlling props, they'd at least leave an entrance. Otherwise, once the instance starts and the ground entrance seals, they wouldn't be able to get in."
So the group reopened the elevator door and headed to the third basement level.
As soon as the elevator door opened, white dust floated in the air. The entire third basement level was clogged like a haze, completely impossible to see through.
"It looks like Zhu Rumin and Qiu Xiangdong did come to the third basement level." Xu Huo said.
The players headed toward the corridor marking the laboratory boundary and began moving the corpses elsewhere.
"All this pollen might explode. Everyone be careful not to create sparks." Ge Pan warned.
The players handled the work cautiously, lining up to transport the corpses out.
During this time, Xu Huo retrieved two flying instruments, but with so many people around, he couldn't open them to check.
"I don't get why this laboratory even made the floors out of metal. Dragging a chair could create sparks, and they planted all these messy plants. No wonder it went under." Chu Yuan remarked.
"Why are you so talkative?" Miao Yu said impatiently. "If you're not satisfied, go find the people who built the lab."
Chu Yuan sulkily swallowed his words.
These corpses were also covered in plants, many of them strung together by roots. It took two hours of cleaning before the corridor was finally passable.
Sure enough, there was a door in the middle of the corridor, not sealed with metal strips. But when they opened it, the inside was also filled with corpses.
No choice. They had to keep cleaning.
Once both sides of the laboratory were connected, Xu Huo and the others finally saw the lab's full layout.
Unlike the cold, sterile atmosphere before, this half's decoration could be called "humanized." The labs and offices weren't repetitive and high-frequency but each had its own character, fewer in number, more like a community.
Moreover, the lab's outer walls had large glass windows. Looking out through these windows, one could see the deep blue sea.
"This is just a large underwater viewing structure." Wan Yunrong walked up to the glass window and leaned in to look at the whirlpool inside.
Just then, a palm suddenly pressed against the glass. She jumped back in shock. "There's someone in the water!"
"That's not a person. It's a marine creature." Wu Xiaonan leaned in to observe. "It just looks a bit like a human hand. See, there are suction cups all over it."
"That thing is pretty creatively designed." Chu Yuan said.
Xu Huo also glanced over, but the creature that looked somewhat like a human hand peeled away from the glass window and gradually merged into the dark seawater.
The mutated creature just one window away wasn't important. What mattered was that someone had clearly been on this third basement level recently.
He turned his head to look at a corner of this floor, his gaze steady.
After about a few seconds, faint sounds came from the corridor over there. Ge Pan and the others snapped to alertness. Mao Wei was the first to throw out a few toy-like grenades. The next second, large amounts of pink fluff surged out from behind the corridor, even wrapping up several people.
"Dr. Deng." Xu Huo identified the middle-aged man squeezed into the air.
"Dr. Deng? And his bodyguards. I remember them. They came on the same boat as us." Miao Yu's mouth twisted into a humorless smile. "On the boat, he said he wasn't entering this instance. Didn't expect him to circle the island and still end up in the Deep Blue Laboratory."
Dr. Deng and his two personal bodyguards were stuck in the fluff but didn't rush to get out. Dr. Deng said, "We're not here for the instance. We just came to the island to collect species and stopped in to rest."
"Resting all the way down to the third basement level? That's impressive." Chu Yuan was quite sharp. "Tell me, are you the ones behind the ghost shadow business?"
"What ghost shadow? I don't know anything about it." Dr. Deng explained repeatedly before saying, "I'm not a player. I'm no threat to you. At least put me down first. I can show you the items I've collected. They're in my bag."
"We represent the Bolen Clan. If you have any gains, you can sell them to us on the spot. The price is good."
Mao Wei stepped forward, pulled out the backpack stuck in the fluff, turned it over, and dumped it. Out rolled many bottles and jars containing plant and small animal samples.
"It's true." Mao Wei turned back to the other players, intending to withdraw his prop.
In fact, he couldn't keep his prop out anyway. Dr. Deng might seem easygoing, but his bodyguards weren't necessarily the same. The fluff around the man and woman trapped in front had already melted. They walked out, helped Dr. Deng down, and guarded him closely.
What caught the eye was that they held guns—real, high-lethality weapons. Xu Huo had seen them on the common weapon list for District 011, and they bore the Bolen Clan's family crest.
Before Mao Wei could act, accompanied by a buzzing machine sound, the expanded fluff was all sucked into a vacuum cleaner. The player holding the vacuum cleaner and six others appeared behind Dr. Deng—nine people total, eight of them players.
"Dr. Deng, are you injured?" The female player standing close to Dr. Deng asked with concern.
"No." Dr. Deng waved his hand and quickly said, "Everyone, please don't act rashly. One side of this laboratory is under construction. If a fight breaks out, we might all get buried under the island."
But the expressions of the players beside and behind him said otherwise.
"Let's all calm down. No need for this." Ge Pan mediated. "Mao Wei thought the person hiding here was a player causing us trouble, so he acted. It's just a misunderstanding."
(Chapter End)