Chapter 433: Mental Suppression
Mao Wei walked out from the darkness, stepping across the numbered grid on the floor. "How did you figure out it was me?"
"From the props you used—the fluff grenade, the toy gun—all things kids play with. Hopscotch is also a child's game," Xu Huo said.
"Just based on that?" Mao Wei didn't believe it.
Chu Yuan was even more astonished. "Are you a ghost?"
"That's right. I happened to see you two fighting with Dr. Deng's people earlier," Mao Wei said with a chuckle. "Can't blame me this time. Only by killing someone can you regain your human identity. Sorry, but you'll have to make do."
He said this as he walked toward them.
Chu Yuan kept trying to lift his feet, but aside from the next square in sequence, he couldn't step into any other grid. His feet were completely stuck to the ground.
In the darkness, Xu Huo took out the prop Butterfly Lady had given him, the "Star-Binding Sphere," and said to the approaching Mao Wei, "Actually, you don't know if you're a ghost or not."
"The reason you showed up here is because you've been targeting me and Chu Yuan. Whether you're a ghost or not, you plan to kill us," Xu Huo said. "If I'm guessing right, this started back on the train."
Mao Wei stopped in his tracks. "Not bad reasoning. But if you think stalling for time will work, you're wrong."
As he spoke, he pulled a white thread taut between his hands. With a flick of his right hand, one end of the thread shot toward Xu Huo, piercing his eyeball and burrowing into his brain.
Mao Wei snickered. "This kite string of mine has even caught whales before."
Xu Huo, trembling from the punctured eye, suddenly glanced sideways at him. "Whales? Made of paper?"
Mao Wei froze and quickly stepped back. Just then, he heard someone speaking behind him. "Take a look. Is there still anything in your hand?"
It was Xu Huo's voice—Mao Wei recognized it. But Xu Huo should have been standing in front of him, staring sideways... The kite string in his hand suddenly vanished. Xu Huo, who had been fixed in the grid, stepped out and moved closer.
Mao Wei kept clenching and unclenching his hands, but after a few seconds, his palms were still empty. Realizing something was wrong, he turned to run but slammed into an invisible wall. Looking down, he saw the numbers from his own grid flying out to wrap around his feet and legs, then climbing up to his waist. Meanwhile, Xu Huo kept advancing, reaching a hand toward his face.
"Get away!" In Mao Wei's vision, Xu Huo, still staring sideways, clearly wasn't looking at him, yet he stood rigidly in front of him. His hands first touched Mao Wei's mask, then stabbed straight into his right eye!
"Ahhh!" Mao Wei screamed, wildly swinging his fists to knock down the Xu Huo in front of him.
The sideways-staring Xu Huo fell to the ground as lightly as a piece of paper. The eyeball in his hand rolled automatically back into its socket, squeezed in, and slowly grew a kite string from the center of the pupil. The string swayed as the paper figure stood up, its face gradually morphing into Mao Wei's likeness—but without the mask, ugly, with a gap-toothed grin and yellowed teeth, laughing shamelessly.
Mao Wei's forehead veins bulged. He lunged forward and tore the paper figure apart, but the next second, a thin line of blood appeared on his back, right over his heart. Then blood sprayed out, and he could only twitch on the ground.
"What's wrong with him?" Chu Yuan stared in shock at the man gasping for breath at Xu Huo's feet. "He just started throwing random punches at nothing, then threw himself at you to be killed?"
"Maybe he was already mentally unstable," Xu Huo said, flicking the blood off his Crimson Sword. The Star-Binding Sphere's effect was better than he'd expected. After several beatings from Butterfly Lady, he had managed to mentally suppress Mao Wei smoothly. But he'd been tricked again—Butterfly Lady hadn't told him that after using the Star-Binding Sphere, the user had to stand completely still.
The prop's description hadn't mentioned that either.
"Do I look like an idiot to you?" Chu Yuan slapped his own face.
"Pretty much," Xu Huo said seriously, then added, "Otherwise, we wouldn't be standing here."
Chu Yuan shuddered and stared at him in shock. "After going through life and death together, I already consider you a brother!"
"Thanks." After collecting Mao Wei's props, Xu Huo discovered that hopscotch wasn't his trait but a prop. He took it out.
The prop looked like a map. It could release numbered grids at a certain size, but it couldn't trap players anytime, anywhere. It only worked if no one was within the grid's range when it was set up, and the "counting game" would trigger only when someone walked in.
As for Mao Wei being able to set up grids on their likely path, it wasn't because he'd witnessed the fight in the corridor, as he'd claimed, but through a handkerchief-shaped tracking prop—the one he'd used to wipe his gun. The trigger method was asking someone if they needed help.
As long as the person being asked responded—in any form—they would be tracked.
These two props were quite interesting.
"Mao Wei came specifically to kill us, but instead, he just handed us a free kill," Chu Yuan said, kicking the corpse aside. "Ge Pan and the others should thank us. Otherwise, they might have been the targets. They came up together."
"Thank you? Maybe not. Wanting to kill you, though—that's possible," Xu Huo said flatly. "Mao Wei, Ge Pan, and Zhu Rumin definitely know each other."
Chu Yuan's jaw dropped. "Why? How can you tell?"
"When the daytime players searched the first basement level, Zhu Rumin hadn't gone to the third basement level yet. At that time, Mao Wei and Ge Pan volunteered to guard the corridor instead of searching room by room. They just stood there in the hallway. Only a blind person would have missed Zhu Rumin."
"How do you know Zhu Rumin went to the third basement level then?" Chu Yuan pressed.
Xu Huo glanced at him but didn't elaborate. The two flying surveillance monitors he'd released hadn't captured anyone, but they had captured footprints in front of the elevator, exactly during the time of the daytime search of the first basement level. On the third basement level's floor, covered in white dust, a fresh pair of women's footprints had appeared.
Chu Yuan didn't get an explanation but instinctively believed him. "Three out of twelve people are in cahoots, and they might even be grouped with others. Is this really an instance? How many legitimate players are left?"
Xu Huo didn't say much more. The two of them avoided possible encounters with advanced players and lingered near the elevator, soon running into Gan Qing.
As soon as Gan Qing saw the alcohol barrel in Xu Huo's hand, he snapped, "So the explosion earlier was your doing! What good does blowing this place up do you? Trying to take all the other players down with you?!"
Xu Huo and Chu Yuan didn't respond. Instead, they stared at something behind him.
Gan Qing noticed their strange expressions and turned around, just in time to see a disheveled ghostly figure standing behind a glass window in a room. But in the blink of an eye, it vanished.
"The ghost figure appeared!" Gan Qing's voice rose sharply. He immediately rushed over and opened the door, just as Wan Yunrong was about to come out. She looked at him with disgust. "No need to get so excited about entering the female staff dormitory."
(Chapter End)