# Chapter 437: Restarted Scene
Xu Huo didn't give the other players a detailed battle plan, only assigning approximate positions, leaving the players to improvise during the fight.
"Wait, you're not going to screw us over, are you?" Wu Xiaonan said. "Since the Bolen Clan can bring so many players in here to kill people, finding one or two ticket players isn't hard for them either. How do you prove you're not one of the Bolen Clan's enforcers?"
"Xu Zhi can't be." Chu Yuan said. "Didn't you hear that explosion just now? At least two players from their side almost died at our hands. If he'd been bought off by the Bolen Clan, I wouldn't still be alive."
Wu Xiaonan's eyes darted around as she sized him up. "That's true too. The Bolen Clan definitely wouldn't hire you to blend in with the ticket players."
Chu Yuan's face darkened. "Do you know what happens to people with loose lips?"
Wu Xiaonan snorted.
Chu Yuan's face flushed red, but Gan Qing interrupted them. "Let's hurry up and find places to ambush them."
"Aren't we going to look for Wan Yunrong and Ge Pan? The more people we have, the better." Miao Yu said.
"There's no time. Missing two is missing two." Xu Huo paused, then added, "The Kong siblings will definitely search the entire lab. If they run into them alone, it'll only be their bad luck."
They were strangers thrown together by circumstance. If not for the need to jointly face the risk, the players wouldn't have gathered at all, and naturally wouldn't go out of their way to find two isolated players.
But just as he finished speaking, Wan Yunrong silently emerged from a corner.
Xu Huo turned around without any surprise—he'd noticed her long ago. "The ghost-catching game has taken a back seat now. You can safely cooperate with us."
Wan Yunrong had been nearby since Wu Xiaonan and Xu Huo's group met up. After eavesdropping on their conversation with a prop, she decided to come out. Compared to the foreseeable player slaughter, the Kong siblings were the greater threat.
"I heard everything you said. I can cooperate with you." Wan Yunrong said. "But we must agree that before the cooperation is dissolved, the game cannot continue. I believe there must be other players here who have become ghosts. Since none of us know whether we're ghosts or when we'll turn into one, it's best to follow this agreement."
"If you agree, I can open the elevator door."
"You can open it?" Gan Qing said in surprise.
"This kind of tree resin can be dissolved with a special potion." Wan Yunrong nodded.
Just as everyone was eagerly urging her to open the door, Xu Huo suddenly heard a faint "click"—a sound made by a person. He was about to turn around when Wan Yunrong, who was standing beside him, leaped backward and retreated, staring at them with suspicion.
"You weren't the ones who blocked this door, were you!" Wu Xiaonan sneered.
Xu Huo snapped his head up to look at her.
"How is that possible!" Chu Yuan, as if meeting her for the first time, began repeating the same words he'd said when he first encountered Wu Xiaonan. The phrasing wasn't exactly the same, but the general meaning was identical.
And Miao Yu and the others didn't find anything wrong with this, as if hearing this conversation for the first time, even adding a few supplementary comments on the side.
The only difference this time was that Wan Yunrong was there to interject, but the overall direction of the conversation remained largely unchanged.
The same words, the same scene, eerily repeating themselves—like time had rewound... No, this wasn't time rewind. If it were simply time reversal, Wan Yunrong shouldn't have been here before the conversation started.
Someone had tampered with things.
Xu Huo played along with the other players' conversation while keeping an eye on his surroundings.
If Dr. Deng and his group had arrived, he would definitely have sensed them. The reason they hadn't made a move was because they weren't confident?
Someone was moving within his perception range. Xu Huo immediately called out in a voice neither too loud nor too soft toward that direction: "Ge Pan!"
The moving person stopped, then started moving again.
"Do you think Ge Pan is the ghost?" Xu Huo deliberately paused before asking.
The other party stopped again as expected.
"Why bring him up? Are you going to look for him?" Wu Xiaonan looked at him strangely.
"I just think he's the only one left. It'd be better to find him if we can, but if not..." Xu Huo sensed the person moving away and quickly said to Wan Yunrong, "Take out your potion and wash off this tree resin."
Wan Yunrong was just feeling surprised when she heard him continue, "I'll tell you how I knew after we go down. Let's go now!"
In the second round of conversation, they had only been discussing cooperation. Because Wan Yunrong's appearance order had changed, Xu Huo hadn't yet had time to assign positions.
Nevertheless, Wan Yunrong complied. She splashed the potion onto the elevator door, and the tree resin began to dissolve, turning into liquid that dripped down.
The elevator door opened. The group entered and quickly descended to the third underground level, crossing the corridor where the bodies were stored and returning to the eastern half of the lab.
"Hide behind the corpses." Xu Huo said.
"You still haven't explained what's going on." Compared to Wu Xiaonan, Wan Yunrong's memory gap was more pronounced. Given her previous conflict with Xu Huo, there was no way she would have approached these players without any guard up.
But just now, she didn't know what had happened—she'd looked up and seen Gan Qing and the others.
"The words we said in front of the elevator just now were mostly said a few minutes ago." Xu Huo said. "You were the one who said the tree resin could be dissolved with potion."
"Impossible!" Wan Yunrong found it hard to believe.
"Otherwise, how would I know?" Xu Huo countered.
"Wait," Chu Yuan was confused. "You mean our memories are all messed up? Why don't I feel anything at all?"
Xu Huo was silent for two seconds. "Maybe because you're not sharp enough."
Chu Yuan's face darkened. "Insulting me in a roundabout way."
"Actually, I did feel something was off." Wu Xiaonan said. "But how do you prove you're telling the truth? Maybe you're the one who tampered with us. Otherwise, how do you explain everyone else's memories being affected while yours aren't?"
"I'm immune to certain traits and props." Xu Huo casually made up an excuse, then added, "But the other party probably heard our plan to deal with the Kong siblings."
"What!" Gan Qing was stunned. "We're still going after two B-rank players?"
"Wu Xiaonan alone can stall one B-rank player." Xu Huo passed the word to her.
"It's true." Wu Xiaonan touched her hair, took out her phone from her pocket, and pressed play on an audio recording. It was the recording from when she first met Xu Huo and the others, without Wan Yunrong present.
Then came a brief moment of noise, followed by the sound of Wan Yunrong's movements, and Wu Xiaonan repeating her own words.
"Holy crap, it's actually true!" Chu Yuan exclaimed.
Miao Yu patted his shoulder, signaling him to step aside. "Since someone heard our conversation, they're probably waiting for us with Dr. Deng and his group right now. The ambush plan won't work anymore."
"And we have to watch out for a player who can cause short-term memory loss."
(Chapter End)