Chapter 542: Two Clown Cities?

Chapter 542: Two Clown Cities?

Several people ran out of the woods one after another. Zhuo Wangsun retreated to Xu Huo's side and lowered his voice, saying, "It looks like they haven't completely degenerated."

Xu Huo glanced at him, but the player in front said, "You'd better not let your sympathy run wild and get mixed up with xenomorphs. Even if he can still talk now, there's no telling when he might change. If innocent people get hurt, you'll be the one to blame!"

"Do you have any humanity left?!" Zhuo Wangsun shouted angrily. "Even if someone is infected, it doesn't necessarily mean they'll become a xenomorph. Killing everyone you see like this—aren't you afraid of making a mistake?!"

"Better to kill the wrong person than let one go!" the player said stubbornly. "How many people have died in Clown City because of xenomorphs? If I let you go, and one day you turn into a xenomorph and kill people, do they deserve to die?"

Zhuo Wangsun laughed in anger. "By your logic, you're the ones who deserve to die!"

The few people who had come out subdued the two injured individuals and called out to Xu Huo's group, "Brothers, these heads can fetch a lot of White Notes. Why be so stubborn? How about we join forces, kill those xenomorphs behind you, and split the reward with you?"

Zhuo Wangsun looked at them in shock, but Xu Huo stopped him. "They're not talking to you—they're talking to me."

"Haven't you noticed? Besides Master Tu and the two injured ones in front, you and the others have also been labeled as xenomorphs by them."

"How is that possible!" Zhuo Wangsun said. "I'm not injured or infected. They call me a xenomorph—I think they're the real xenomorphs!"

"Exactly." Xu Huo reached out and tapped the back of the player's head in front of him. The metal lock crumbled, and the holographic glasses fell into his hand.

"Don't move," he warned the player who tried to resist, then tossed the glasses to Zhuo Wangsun. "Take a look at this."

When the glasses were on the player, Zhuo Wangsun hadn't even been aware of their existence. Now holding them in his hand, he looked at the player two meters away and exclaimed in shock, "Now he's not a xenomorph anymore! What's going on? What the hell is happening?!"

Xu Huo gestured for him to calm down and said to the others in front, who were also wearing protective suits and holographic glasses, "You wouldn't mind a two-minute delay, would you?"

The group stared at Xu Huo without speaking. Xu Huo called Master Tu and the others over, handed the glasses to him, and asked, "Is this a Clown City product?"

Master Tu examined them. "The model is new, but the color is different. Clown City's holographic glasses always have a red-black frame. These are blue-black."

"Red-black? Blue-black?" The player Xu Huo had caught turned back to look at Master Tu and the others, noticing they all wore red-black glasses, and most of them had no external injuries or signs of infection. He frowned. "Clown City's holographic glasses have always been blue-black. Did you forge these glasses?"

"My holographic glasses are an old model from a few years ago, and they looked like this when I got them!" Master Tu was equally confused. "Clown City worships red—how could they paint the frames blue?!"

"No need to say more—these infected xenomorphs must have used some special method to take off the soldiers' glasses to survive, then used protective suits to block secondary infection, allowing them to move around with their sanity intact." Someone from Master Tu's side speculated maliciously, "They've probably formed an organization, deliberately using colors to distinguish friend from foe. I think they want to kill all of Clown City's soldiers, maybe even harbor ill will toward the entire Clown City. After all, not everyone is willing to complete the cleanup mission!"

The people on the other side were baffled, but they understood the gist. A middle-aged woman stepped forward two paces. "Are you saying we're the xenomorphs?"

"Are you not?" Master Tu retorted.

The middle-aged woman smiled. "I've heard before that some people will stop at nothing to survive, but now they're even making up stories like this."

She then looked at Xu Huo. "Brother, you've been fooled by their lies, haven't you? You don't seem infected. It's best to stay away from them. It doesn't matter if you don't have glasses—if you let my companion go, I can pay you in White Notes right now!"

"You're full of shit!" Xiao Tian, the young man who had been slashed alongside Master Tu, rushed forward and pressed his gun to the player's temple, shouting, "Do you believe I'll kill him right now?!"

The middle-aged woman's face changed, and the people behind her raised their guns. Just as the two sides were about to clash, Xu Huo kicked Xiao Tian over, pressing his sword against his throat. "Are you going to listen to you or to me?"

Xiao Tian dared not speak but swallowed his saliva and, with a hint from Master Tu, said, "To you."

Xu Huo sheathed his sword and turned to the other side, asking directly, "Did you come from the east side of the canyon or the west side?"

The captured player said angrily, "Sister Shan, don't waste words with him. Just kill them all!"

"Wenping!" The middle-aged woman, Sister Shan, cut him off and answered Xu Huo's question. "East side of the canyon."

"How is that possible!" Master Tu blurted out. "Crossing the canyon leads to the second-stage cleanup area—that's a restricted zone. How could you have come from there?!"

"What are you talking about? That's Clown City over there," Sister Shan said.

Master Tu staggered, barely steadying himself with someone's help before pointing a trembling finger at the opposite side of the canyon. "You mean the east side is over there, right?"

"Old man, are you messing with us?" Sister Shan's face darkened.

"Something's wrong, something's wrong," Zhuo Wangsun said, waving his hands repeatedly. He looked at Xu Huo. "Before he took off his glasses, I saw him as a thermal image—that means he's a xenomorph, right? But after he took them off, I saw him just like you—completely normal!"

Xu Huo had already understood the situation when he saw Sister Shan's group. He unfurled the new map of Clown City, pointed to the location of Clown City on it, and said, "Master Tu isn't messing with you. They all come from here."

The player named Wenping was still strung up by the kite string and dared not move even though the sword was no longer at his neck. He just looked at the map and exclaimed, "Impossible! You're saying that place was overrun by xenomorphs years ago, the city destroyed, and it's deep in the cleanup zone!"

Xu Huo smiled. "I'm not a player from Clown City, but I did start from that place, passed through a Gobi area, a jungle area, and a high-temperature zone to reach this canyon. And on the other side of the canyon, according to the map I have, it's also marked as part of the cleanup zone's interior."

Zhuo Wangsun caught on. "You mean there are actually two Clown Cities?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Xu Huo said. "The original territory of Clown City is huge, and such a large area has been taken over by xenomorphs. Yet the Clown City government only sends insignificant people to complete the cleanup mission—that's unreasonable in itself. The most direct evidence is the holographic glasses."

(Chapter End)