Chapter 453: A-Rank Rating
Not far from the island, on the sea surface, Gan Qing stood upright on the water, dragging one person with each hand, and said with unbearable frustration, "Have you two rested enough?"
Chu Yuan, holding onto his left hand, soaked in the water and said matter-of-factly, "I'm injured, how can I swim!"
Dr. Deng on the other side also apologized, "I'm really sorry. The rubber boat broke when we came up, and I can't swim. Sorry for the trouble."
Gan Qing was also seriously injured. He struggled to drag the two people and couldn't help saying, "We've already left the laboratory, even left this island. Does that mean the instance is over?"
If the instance was over, he could leave this place, which would be better than dragging these two around.
"What if the Kong siblings come up, or the Bolen Clan's support arrives..."
"What are you worried about?" Chu Yuan interrupted him. "If the instance is already over, we can leave anytime. Even if the entire Bolen Clan shows up, it's useless... I said, can you hold on tighter? I'm about to fall off."
Gan Qing lifted his leg and kicked him, losing his balance, and the three of them wobbled on the water together.
Chu Yuan and Dr. Deng each swallowed a couple of mouthfuls of water. After Gan Qing steadied himself, Dr. Deng said, "I think the Bolen Clan definitely didn't expect the players to come out early. We should be safe for a short time. It's better to rest and recover. Entering the station while injured is also very dangerous."
"He has a point. You can walk on water, right? Hurry up and take us to the shore," Chu Yuan said.
"My trait only lets me stand on the surface of liquids; I can't move freely," Gan Qing said expressionlessly. "Otherwise, I'd just leave you two and swim over."
"I can't swim!" Dr. Deng said nervously, then changed the subject and asked, "The others haven't come up yet?"
"I wish no one would come up. If it's that Kong guy..." Before Chu Yuan could finish, someone suddenly surfaced more than ten meters away. The three were startled, then saw Miao Yu emerge from underwater, supporting a floating corpse and saying, "Kong Cheng is already dead."
"Wait, aren't you one of Kong Cheng's people?" Gan Qing shouted.
Miao Yu took off her protective mask, rolled her eyes, and said, "Can't you use your brain a little?"
Gan Qing certainly knew he had been fooled by Qiu Xiangdong. After using the Convergence Bag three times in a row, his stamina simply couldn't recover. That was also why he was standing here instead of swimming ashore.
"I don't understand. Were half of the ticket players in this instance sent by the Bolen Clan?"
"Wu Xiaonan and Qiu Xiangdong defected temporarily," Miao Yu said. "Last night, Wu Xiaonan and I were dealing with Kong Hui. Kong Hui managed to persuade Wu Xiaonan, and the two of them joined forces. I only managed to stab Wu Xiaonan once before I was captured."
"No wonder," Chu Yuan said. "I thought Wu Xiaonan seemed like a petty person when she entered the instance. How could she be so generous as to waste stamina searching for medicine while injured? Even if she found the medicine, she definitely couldn't outfight us."
Miao Yu looked around and said, "It seems everyone else is dead. I'll take you to shore."
As she spoke, she released a rubber boat, first helping Dr. Deng on board, then Gan Qing and Chu Yuan climbed in using both hands and feet.
"Although the new rubber boats are automatic, they can only carry two people. I bought an old-fashioned one. Manual is a bit troublesome."
"Good thing you had a rubber boat, or I really wouldn't have the strength to swim ashore." Chu Yuan poured medicine onto his bloody leg, easing the pain before leaning against the side of the boat and letting out a long breath. "That Xu Zhi kid is a lunatic. Setting fire in that kind of environment—he really isn't afraid of death!"
"So what if he isn't afraid of death? He's dead anyway," Gan Qing said flatly. "Too bad none of us cleared the instance this time."
Dr. Deng touched the ticket in his pocket with some worry and said a good word for Xu Huo, "If it weren't for his move, we might not have been able to escape from the Kong siblings at all."
That was the truth, and Gan Qing and Chu Yuan both fell silent.
Miao Yu glanced at the exhausted group and asked Dr. Deng, "Did you find the medicine?"
Dr. Deng wasn't concerned about the medicine anymore, only about how to leave.
"Even if the medicine was in the laboratory, it's probably gone after that explosion. It just makes it easier for the Bolen Clan people to search."
"If they could find it, the Bolen Clan wouldn't have waited until the instance opened to come," Miao Yu said. "The laboratory is different during instance time and non-instance time. There's also that ghostly figure that appears. Maybe the medicine was hidden by it."
"If the ghostly figure is just a prop, then there's really no way. If there were other players hiding in the laboratory, they're probably dead by now." Chu Yuan poured self-healing agent into his mouth, swallowed a couple of times, and said, "Anyway, it's none of my business now. I'm definitely not going back down to look."
Miao Yu was silent for a moment, about to say something when the game notification sounded.
[Congratulations to player Passerby A for clearing "Don't Open the Door in the Dark." Based on your performance in this instance, your task completion rating is A-Rank. You will receive one new trait, three props, two tickets, and one hundred thousand white notes.]
Xu Huo, who was rapidly rising from the sea, raised an eyebrow upon receiving the game notification.
The laboratory had been blown through, allowing players to freely enter and exit the instance area, which meant the instance had ended early. He had originally thought he would definitely fail, but unexpectedly, things had turned around, and he had actually completed the instance task.
Thinking of the "ghost" he had caught, he smiled slightly, then burst out of the water, took off his prop mask, and flipped onto the rubber boat.
"Xu Zhi!" Chu Yuan waved at him from a distance, quite happily shouting, "You're alive too."
Xu Huo glanced at Kong Cheng's corpse, drove the rubber boat over, and said to the group, "You're all pretty badly hurt."
Among them, Dr. Deng was actually the least injured.
At this point, Gan Qing and Chu Yuan no longer blamed him and explained Miao Yu's situation.
Xu Huo didn't show any surprise. Qiu Xiangdong and Wu Xiaonan's behavior had been off from the start. With a formidable enemy watching closely, even temporarily, they shouldn't have wasted stamina. Their eagerness was a bit too much.
That was why when using the Convergence Bag, he had used the Kite String to keep his distance and hadn't touched the rivets on it.
Later, Qiu Xiangdong had pressed Dr. Deng about whether he knew the medicine's whereabouts, and the Kong siblings coming down directly showed they didn't care about Dr. Deng's life or death and were going to kill him.
As for whether Miao Yu had really been caught off guard by the defecting Wu Xiaonan and Qiu Xiangdong as she claimed, that remained to be seen.
But now that the instance was over, it didn't matter.
"This is the first time I've encountered an instance ending early due to site destruction," Miao Yu said. "We all failed to clear it. We don't have return tickets, and we can't get any rewards."
The three were quite dejected. They were seriously injured, had used up their props, and had gained nothing while still having to face the risks ahead.
"Anyway, the instance time isn't over yet. How about we hide on the island for a couple of days?" Chu Yuan suggested.
(End of Chapter)